Anti-Aging Information

Fortunately, most of the truly bothersome changes to the lungs make their appearance much later in life. Once again, it really does pay to be physically active. For instance, you can lessen calcification of the movable ribs while maintaining their flexibility through exercise and stretching. And an active life can have a beneficial effect on the efficiency of your oxygen consumption.

Then there's the standard caveatdon't smoke. Even with nonsmokers, lung capacity drops each year starting anywhere between ages 20 and 35. And airflow, as measured by peak expiratory flow rate and forced expiratory volume (the amount of air you can push out in a second), also declines with age. Smoking only hastens the aging process. Indeed, one of the greatest challenges and potential triumphs for those of us in medical practice can be convincing patients to stop smoking. In every way imaginable, the health of your lungs demands that you not smoke.

An ongoing theme I want to stress is that the various parts of your body are interrelated. For example, at the same time lung capacity and function start to decline with age, the rest of your body, especially if it's running poorly, may actually be putting increased demands on your lungs. As you age, your fast-twitch muscle fibers (what Michael Johnson and the 200 yard dash are all about) are decreasing. Understandably, there is also a simultaneous decrease in anaerobic muscle enzyme activity. Meanwhile, happily, your slow-twitch fibers, the stuff marathoners are made of, increase with age. But they tend to work efficiently only if you have sufficient oxygen available, and that depends on adequately functioning lungs to deliver the goods.

As we age, we can end up with a body that works less efficiently but demands as much or more lung capacity to accomplish the task. By the time you're passing the 40 mark in that great race of life, even if you had not planned it, you find that you're definitely made for distance, not speed, especially if you can maintain the discipline necessary to maintain fit lung and intercostal muscle tissue. In many ways, there's nothing bad about that.

Another side effect of the big lung change of life and aging is that the respiratory center in the brain that controls breathing can become more sensitive to a drop in oxygen level (called hypoxia) yet tolerate persistently elevated carbon dioxide levels. This is why you may have more trouble sleeping with advancing age. Again, translated into plain English, this means you no longer react to the usual stimuli such as borderline low oxygen or high ambient carbon dioxide levels. You compensate by continuing to take deep breaths or sigh as you sleep. Fortunately, however, for most of us this is more an inconvenience than a serious health problem. Another miracle: You close your eyes, fall asleep, go on automatic pilot, and even wake up the next morning.

To sum up, your lungs will undergo an inevitable loss of elasticity. Likewise, the muscles of respiration can, if allowed, become as deconditioned as any other muscle in your body. But again, there are steps you can take to minimize these negative effects.