When I’m not healing the sick, my two main hobbies (or obsessions) are music and fitness training. In my previous article I mentioned my two guitar heroes, George Harrison and Eric Clapton, who were best friends, and referenced one of George’s most popular songs. It’s fair to say that Eric could knock out a decent tune himself. However, when he wrote and recorded Give Me Strength, on which he played slide guitar in a traditional blues style, I don’t think he was referring to resistance training, as he was then in recovery from heroin addiction.
Which brings me to my other obsession – fitness training. Every week I join my fellow budding athletes in what I think of as a one-hour challenging bootcamp, led by Lee Merrien, former Olympic runner and strict taskmaster, in his strength and conditioning class. If I’m honest, I slightly dread it but always feel better after completing it. So, I was heartened to read an article published in April this year in the British Journal of Sports Medicine which found that around 90-120 minutes of resistance training per week lowered risk of death by 13%.
We have known for many years that aerobic or cardiovascular training improves health and lowers risk of death and disease. The 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines recommend a weekly 150 to 300 minutes of moderate physical activity (such as walking) or 75-150 minutes of vigorous physical activity (such as running or cycling). These guidelines also recommend two days per week of muscle-strengthening activities. However, clinicians and scientists are seeking more detailed information to better understand and advise on exactly how much, and what type, of strengthening exercises to reduce disease and early death. The term they use is clarifying the ‘dose-response relationship’.
The study published recently had followed up over 147,000 people (mainly female nurses) over a 30-year period. The large numbers involved and the significant length of time makes the results all the more convincing and add to the power of the results. It found that either cardiovascular type exercise, or strength training exercise alone reduced risk of death and disease, mainly from circulatory problems such as heart disease or stroke, but also from Alzheimer’s dementia. They also found that combining both types of exercise further improved outcomes. Interestingly, the results followed a J-shaped curve, which identified the sweet spot of weekly strength training at close to two hours, but going beyond this provided no additional benefit.
There seems to be a growing body of evidence that strength training, especially from the age of 50 onwards, is a particularly important mechanism for maintaining healthy hearts and brains, in addition to maintaining balance and reducing risk of injury through falls. We know that resistance training improves glucose metabolism, body composition and muscular strength. Grip strength is being used as a measure of frailty, and we are discovering that myokines, hormones released from exercising muscles, have a positive role in maintaining and developing new brain pathways as we age.
This research is another stepping stone along the way. Further work is likely to follow, to get a more detailed idea of exactly what strength training, and how much is best for each individual, in much the same way as we would do for any drug, which exercise is increasingly recognised as.
Eric Clapton turned 81 years old about two weeks before this research was published. Perhaps his song still holds a certain resonance for him today.
