Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I Today. I OWE
Speaker 1: a reading National Geographic magazine dated October twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: which is donated by the publisher as a reminder. RADIOI
Speaker 1: is a reading service intended for people who are blind
Speaker 1: or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
Speaker 1: printed material. Please join me now for the first article
Speaker 1: titled Older, Better, Faster, Stronger. This article by Chris Ballard.
Speaker 1: In evolutionary terms, humans are pretty new at getting old.
Speaker 1: Since nineteen hundred, we've managed to increase our life expectancy
Speaker 1: from forty seven to seventy eight, even though we're only
Speaker 1: just now beginning to understand the science of longevity and
Speaker 1: what exactly human beings are capable of as we live
Speaker 1: deeper and healthier into our seventies, eighties, nineties, even one hundreds.
Speaker 1: To help you harness all that we're learning about how
Speaker 1: to age athletically, National geographicun a handful of people hitting
Speaker 1: their stride in the last leg of their lives, we
Speaker 1: all shall share some pointers about how to start extending
Speaker 1: your health span right now, no matter how old you are,
Speaker 1: and some wisdom pep talks really from four of the
Speaker 1: greatest athletic specimens of the twentieth century How to age
Speaker 1: like an athlete. An increasing body of research is telling
Speaker 1: us that staying active as we age provides extraordinary health benefits.
Speaker 1: These over fifty champs offer proof of what we gain
Speaker 1: by being athletes later in our lives. For Nora Langdon,
Speaker 1: the moment of truth came on the stairs. She was
Speaker 1: sixty four years old. Up to that point, Langdon had
Speaker 1: lived a largely satisfying life. She's raised two kids, had
Speaker 1: good friends, and was in her third decade as a
Speaker 1: real estate agent in the Detroit area. But as time
Speaker 1: went on, she'd gained weight, slowly at first, until suddenly
Speaker 1: she had two hundred twenty pounds. She had never been
Speaker 1: an athlete, never played sports, hit the gym, or exercised consistence.
Speaker 1: But she wasn't a couch potato either. Her dad had
Speaker 1: worked in a steel factory, waking the kids at five
Speaker 1: a m. For prayer and breakfast, and at night they
Speaker 1: all helped with the family's sole food catering business. In
Speaker 1: her world, effort had always mattered, and yet here she
Speaker 1: was struggling to make it to the second floor while
Speaker 1: showing houses to potential buyers. She began to worry. She'd
Speaker 1: seen retirees fall prey to a sedentary lifestyle. Ten years later.
Speaker 1: They're gone because they don't do anything but go home
Speaker 1: and eat, eat, sit down and look at the TV.
Speaker 1: She says. I saw a lot of my friends pass
Speaker 1: away because they weren't strong enough. She wanted no part
Speaker 1: of it. I said, no, I'm not going out like that.
Speaker 1: At her birthday party, she got to talking with a
Speaker 1: friend's husband by the name of Art Little wiree enthusiastic
Speaker 1: and no nonsense. He worked as a trainer at a
Speaker 1: gym for power lifters north of Detroit. He invited her
Speaker 1: to come in for a workout. Langdon wasn't sure. She'd
Speaker 1: never done any weight lifting and had always considered herself
Speaker 1: a weakling. When Langdon showed up, Little led her to
Speaker 1: a bench. Around them, thick necked men grunted, weights clattered.
Speaker 1: Little instructed Langdon to lie down, then lowered a broomstick
Speaker 1: into her hands. It weighed less than three pounds. Up
Speaker 1: and down she went with it, fighting gravity the whole way.
Speaker 1: That night, she returned home, exhausted, her body ached everywhere.
Speaker 1: Years of disuse coming to bear. She was reluctant to return,
Speaker 1: but a little voice in her set in her head
Speaker 1: told her she couldn't quit, but not not after only
Speaker 1: one session. So she went back to Little's jim later
Speaker 1: that week, and then the week after. Little pushed her
Speaker 1: to add weight from broomstick to empty barbell, then to
Speaker 1: the bar with plates. Each time she told him she
Speaker 1: couldn't do it, just try it, Little responded. She did,
Speaker 1: finding she'd loved the feeling of getting stronger. Soon enough,
Speaker 1: with Little's encouragement, she entered powerlifting competitions and began collecting
Speaker 1: gold metal in her age group, even some for bench press,
Speaker 1: a long way from her first session. Now in her
Speaker 1: ninth decade, she is stronger than most women in their
Speaker 1: twenties and thirties. Langdon is not alone. More people are
Speaker 1: not only exercising longer and later in life, they are
Speaker 1: also competing and breaking records in a range of sports.
Speaker 1: In Pennsylvania, a computer programmer took up running again in
Speaker 1: his fifties and now holds the fastest marathon time for
Speaker 1: a seventy plus runner. In Idaho, a mountain biker racked
Speaker 1: up world championships while discovering that prioritizing mental health rekindled
Speaker 1: her love for the sport and helped her stay sharp
Speaker 1: and in Ireland after a string of injuries, a former
Speaker 1: rugby player learned that finding the right sport for a
Speaker 1: changing body sometimes takes persistence. Today, he's the Guinness World
Speaker 1: Record holder for being the first man to swim a
Speaker 1: mile in ice cold water on all seven continents. These
Speaker 1: athletes are remarkable exact samples of a broad but quiet
Speaker 1: revolution in how we understand human potential across a person's lifetime.
Speaker 1: Hirofumi Tanaka, a leading researcher on exercise and longevity, views
Speaker 1: masters athletes, typically those hardy souls who keep competing beyond
Speaker 1: the age of thirty five, as a compelling model of
Speaker 1: what he calls exceptionally successful aging, thanks to their ability
Speaker 1: to preserve strength, endurance, and cardiovascular health well into later life.
Speaker 1: It's really staggering, says Tanaka, director of the cardio Vascular
Speaker 1: Aging Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin.
Speaker 1: If you look at the world record for any given
Speaker 1: sport that's basically stagnated, they haven't changed that much over
Speaker 1: the last ten to twenty years. But age group records,
Speaker 1: he says, are a different story. They are improving rapidly.
Speaker 1: These athletes aren't just aging well, they're redefining what aging
Speaker 1: can look like. Longevity is one thing, quality of life
Speaker 1: is another. In recent decades, scientists have turned their attention
Speaker 1: to lengthening the stretch of life spent, active, healthy, and engaged,
Speaker 1: called health span. The goal is no longer just to
Speaker 1: extend life, but to expand the years you can truly
Speaker 1: live well. While diet matters, of course, in medicine and
Speaker 1: genetics play a role, exercise is the lynchpin when it
Speaker 1: comes to health span. It improves heart health, lowers the
Speaker 1: risk of cancer, increases bone density, aids in cognition, reduces
Speaker 1: the prevalence and impact of Alzheimer's, and decreases symptoms of depression.
Speaker 1: A twenty twenty four longitudinal study in Circulation found that
Speaker 1: logging three hundred minutes of moderate weekly exercise or one
Speaker 1: hundred fifty minutes of intense activity can lower mortality risk
Speaker 1: by roughly thirty percent. By another measure, every minute you
Speaker 1: exercise adds five minutes to rars life. Across these pages,
Speaker 1: we highlight a handful of records setting athletes from their
Speaker 1: fifties to their eighties. Each extraordinary competitor, provides insight into
Speaker 1: the lessons and emerging science of aging athletes, and gives
Speaker 1: us all something to strive for the powerful impact of
Speaker 1: weight training. Only a few months into her new life
Speaker 1: at the gym back in two thousand and six, Nora
Speaker 1: Langdon was already feeling the benefits. She was becoming steadier
Speaker 1: on her feet, stronger through the core, and more confident
Speaker 1: under the bar. Like many older adults, Langdon likely experienced
Speaker 1: cyclopedia the age related loss of muscle mass that accumulates
Speaker 1: with inactivity. Cycopenia can lead to a host of negative
Speaker 1: outcomes reduced mobility, increased danger of falls, a lack of independence.
Speaker 1: The good news lifting helps counteract those effects. A twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four study published in the Journal of the American
Speaker 1: College of Cardiology found women who do strength training are
Speaker 1: more likely to live longer and have a lower risk
Speaker 1: of death from heart disease compared with women who don't.
Speaker 1: Those who participate in strength based exercises had a nineteen
Speaker 1: percent reduction in mortality risk from any cause and a
Speaker 1: thirty percent reduction in mortality risk from heart related conditions.
Speaker 1: And the benefits for women are even more pronounced than
Speaker 1: for men. In Langdon's case, she steadily lost body weight,
Speaker 1: dropping almost twenty pounds, but also gained muscle. Within months,
Speaker 1: she was pushing around enough weight that Little suggested she
Speaker 1: enter her first state power lifting tournament. When Langdon arrived,
Speaker 1: she was in awe of all the strong women, most
Speaker 1: of them much younger than she was. Then she got
Speaker 1: under the bar. To her shock, she took home the
Speaker 1: women's sixty to sixty nine age group gold in all
Speaker 1: three events she entered, squatting a hundred ninety pounds, bench
Speaker 1: pressing ninety five, and dead lifting two hundred fifty. After
Speaker 1: another year of training, Langdon had advanced to the nationals
Speaker 1: and then to the two thousand and eight World Championships
Speaker 1: in Palm Springs, California, where she squatted three hundred thirty
Speaker 1: pounds and won her age group's gold medal. Since then,
Speaker 1: she has set more than twenty national on world age
Speaker 1: group records, logging personal records prs of two hundred three
Speaker 1: pounds in the bench press, three hundred eighty one pounds
Speaker 1: in the dead lift, and four hundred thirteen pounds in
Speaker 1: the squad mark she set in her seventies. Her bench
Speaker 1: press and dead lift prs remained US records in the
Speaker 1: seventies age group. Now eighty two, Langdon still trains religiously
Speaker 1: three days a week for three to four hours, usually
Speaker 1: wearing converse high tops and eschewing headphones to better focus
Speaker 1: on the task at hand. She drinks protein shakes on
Speaker 1: the days she trains, eats beef twice a week, and
Speaker 1: swears by an elixir of a tablespoon of apple cider
Speaker 1: vinegar in a half glass of water. All I want
Speaker 1: to do is inspire other people just to get up
Speaker 1: and do things, she says, But the challenge for most
Speaker 1: is getting started. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Speaker 1: found only seven percent of American adults due strength training
Speaker 1: three times a week. If they can make the leap
Speaker 1: to take up weight training, the effects begin to compound.
Speaker 1: A study in Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in
Speaker 1: Sports found older people gain not only muscle mass, but
Speaker 1: also confidence and motivation. Langdon said she feels as if
Speaker 1: she's getting stronger, even at her age, and she has
Speaker 1: no plans of stopping either, not until, as she puts it,
Speaker 1: the Lord tells me to go on my own. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, she'll be in the weight room three times
Speaker 1: a week without fail. Starting late can help you finish stronger.
Speaker 1: When Gene Ultra Geezer Dykes revived a long dormant athletic passion,
Speaker 1: he discovered his DeLay's delayed commitment to competitive runs might
Speaker 1: be a secret weapon. Dikes grew up in Canton, Ohio,
Speaker 1: and ran in school, then drifted away from the sport.
Speaker 1: He became a father to two daughters, took up golf
Speaker 1: and bowling, focused on his job as a computer programmer.
Speaker 1: When Dikes was in his early fifties, a friend recommended
Speaker 1: that he join a running group in the Philly suburbs
Speaker 1: where he lives. Soon, the group persuaded Dikes to enter races,
Speaker 1: including a half marathon. He loved the competitiveness of road
Speaker 1: racing and had a blast running trails. In November two
Speaker 1: thousand six, at age fifty eight, he lined up alongside
Speaker 1: more than thirty five thousand other qualifiers on a cool
Speaker 1: day in Staten Island at the start of the New
Speaker 1: York City Marathon. Not only did he finish, but he
Speaker 1: did so in under four hours. Immediately, Dikes wanted more.
Speaker 1: With his kids grown and retirement lined up, he put
Speaker 1: down the five iron and began running a lot. He
Speaker 1: ran with friends, with his daughter, by himself. Over the
Speaker 1: ensuing two decades, Dikes, a slow, light man with an
Speaker 1: ever present smile, ran thousands upon thousands of miles, setting
Speaker 1: age group records in everything from eight k's to marathons
Speaker 1: to fifty k's. He won his age group nearly every
Speaker 1: time he competed in the Boston Marathon. At sixty nine,
Speaker 1: he survived the sun scorched two hundred forty mile Moab
Speaker 1: Endurance Run in Utah, a giant loop covering desert canyons,
Speaker 1: rocky slopes, and two mountain ranges, defying reason. The ultra
Speaker 1: Geezer unnamed bestowed by his daughter, got faster as he aged.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, at age seven, he ran a two hour,
Speaker 1: fifty four minute, twenty three second marathon, not only the
Speaker 1: fastest ever by a seventy plus runner, but also a
Speaker 1: full ten minutes faster than his pr of a year earlier.
Speaker 1: At seventy five, he broke seven masters records during a
Speaker 1: solo twelve hour race at Pennsylvania's Dawn to Dusk to
Speaker 1: Dawn Track Ultras How did Dykes do it? His late
Speaker 1: life surge, which may be telling. We've long been told
Speaker 1: to use it or lose it, but Dike's case proves
Speaker 1: a counterpoint. We tend to think their lifelong athletes research
Speaker 1: Hirophemy Tanaka says of elite Master's performers, whether or not
Speaker 1: many of them actually started competing after they retired. How
Speaker 1: and why is the focus of one of Tanaka's current studies.
Speaker 1: For the past five years, he and his team have
Speaker 1: set up a testing station at the World Master's Athletic Championships,
Speaker 1: most recently in Gainesville, Florida, to compile data from competitors.
Speaker 1: Each year, they release new data on associated medical trends,
Speaker 1: and Tanaka's next paper, for which the team is still
Speaker 1: analyzing data, specifically looks at the tread on our physiological tires.
Speaker 1: Tanaka's hypothesis some younger athletes go so hard that they
Speaker 1: develop osteoarthritis and other conditions that keep them from competing
Speaker 1: later in life. But those people who remain sedentary when
Speaker 1: they're younger, they deserve their joints, they preserve their ligaments,
Speaker 1: and now they can blossom as an athlete. Dikes believes
Speaker 1: this to be the case. He recommends that you save
Speaker 1: your money and your legs for retirement. Looking back, he
Speaker 1: believes the whirl of professional life and fatherhood may have
Speaker 1: been the best thing that ever happened to him. It
Speaker 1: made me delay my hard running until I was older,
Speaker 1: he says. I tell people, you young guys, you're competing
Speaker 1: against Olympic hopefuls. I'm competing against people six feet under.
Speaker 1: It's a lot easier. It was a blessing in disguise.
Speaker 1: While Sykes started later, he also operates at a different
Speaker 1: level than his age group. Peers not to mention plenty
Speaker 1: of runners decades younger. After Dike's record setting twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: marathon performance, researchers at the University of Delaware tested his
Speaker 1: physical markers, including his body composition, the economy of his
Speaker 1: running pace, and the volume of oxygen he could process
Speaker 1: per minute based on his weight. Known as V two max.
Speaker 1: This is a key measure of aerobic fitness that reflects
Speaker 1: how efficiently the body uses oxygen during intense exercise. It was,
Speaker 1: Dikes says, the first time he'd run on a treadmill,
Speaker 1: and he vows the last. They found that Dike's v
Speaker 1: O two max of forty six point nine millileaders was
Speaker 1: nearly double the average for a typical seventy one year old,
Speaker 1: and was far higher than that of most marathon runners
Speaker 1: regardless of age. According to the Delaware researchers, who published
Speaker 1: their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine, most
Speaker 1: marathoners maintain seventy five to eighty five percent of their
Speaker 1: maximum oxygen uptake. Dikes performed at ninety three percent. As
Speaker 1: you might imagine, these markers are closely tied to health span.
Speaker 1: VO two max is not only one of the best
Speaker 1: indicators of overall fitness, but is also one of the
Speaker 1: strongest predictors of longevity. In fact, studies show running is
Speaker 1: associated with a host of life prolonging fact including improved
Speaker 1: cardiovascular health, enhanced immune system, better weight management, and reduced
Speaker 1: risk of chronic diseases. Dikes followed a training plan that
Speaker 1: was as unconventional as he is. It's based around what
Speaker 1: he calls the foe afts faster, farther, frequently and fun.
Speaker 1: He took a period of time a month a year
Speaker 1: and tried to either put in more mileage increase surroundings instead,
Speaker 1: and of course he says, always have fun. Meanwhile, he
Speaker 1: avoided stretching, strength training, and special diets lightweight. Like weightlifter
Speaker 1: Nora Langdon, Dikes never wore headphones, preferring to enjoy things
Speaker 1: around him, but in twenty twenty two, something changed in
Speaker 1: Dike's body. While running, he began to feel weirdly fatigued.
Speaker 1: He thought, oh boy, is this what it's like to
Speaker 1: get old? During a five k, he found that he
Speaker 1: could barely run. He decided to see a doctor, and
Speaker 1: good thing he did. The doctor took tests and diagnosed,
Speaker 1: Oh it's Dikes with blood cancer. Treatment began immediately, and
Speaker 1: fortunately he went into remission. Dikes being Dikes, he was
Speaker 1: back racing two weeks after the good news. Now he
Speaker 1: takes daily medication and is hopeful he can manage the
Speaker 1: incurable but treatable cancer the rest of his life. He
Speaker 1: credits racing. I would never have found out about it
Speaker 1: if I weren't a runner, he says, maybe eventually, maybe
Speaker 1: when I dropped over dead. The diagnosis hasn't stopped him
Speaker 1: from running, but it has changed his approach. After years
Speaker 1: of logging high mileage, believing that, as he says, you've
Speaker 1: got to have your mind overrull your body sometimes, he
Speaker 1: is now listening to his body and trying a reset.
Speaker 1: The seventy seven year old ran the Boston Marathon in
Speaker 1: April and then began an extended break in which he
Speaker 1: plans to rest, try new recovery techniques, and he hopes
Speaker 1: prepare for the next potential goal. All those eighty plus
Speaker 1: age group records can wait. Calm your mind, push your limits.
Speaker 1: For most of her athletic life, Rebecca Rousch felt invincible,
Speaker 1: the rare athlete, able to switchboards effortlessly and seemingly pushed
Speaker 1: past most natural limits. Then, in midlife, a freak accident
Speaker 1: coupled with the stressors of menopause forced her to make
Speaker 1: hard choices and led to a new appreciation for her
Speaker 1: mental health. Born in Puerto Rico, Rush lost her father,
Speaker 1: a U. S Air Force F four pilot, at age
Speaker 1: three when he was shot down during the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: a loss that would come to shape much of her life.
Speaker 1: After running competitively in high school, she discovered climbing, notching
Speaker 1: the first female ascent of El Capitan's Bermuda Dune's Trail
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six, and went on to become an
Speaker 1: early champion in the emergence sport of adventure racing, a
Speaker 1: grueling blend of trekking, mountain biking, paddling, and navigation that
Speaker 1: demands both endurance and resilience over days long wilderness challenges.
Speaker 1: At thirty eight, she pivoted to solo mountain biking and
Speaker 1: came to dominate the sport. She won the Leadville Trail
Speaker 1: one hundred MTB, a high altitude course in the Rocky Mountains,
Speaker 1: then won it three more times twice. She finished first
Speaker 1: among women in a three hundred fifty mile bike race
Speaker 1: on the Iditarod Trail over ice and snow in the
Speaker 1: Alaska Wilderness, and she became the only person to bike
Speaker 1: the length of the ho Chi Min Trail through Vietnam,
Speaker 1: Laos and Cambodia, a feat spurred by her quest, ultimately successful,
Speaker 1: to find her father's crash site. She's now won seven
Speaker 1: world championships and is enshrined in the mountain Biking Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame. Even so, as rouche A approached and then
Speaker 1: surpassed forty, her body, the one that never failed her,
Speaker 1: began to change in real time. She needed sleep more
Speaker 1: than ever, but had a harder time getting it. Our
Speaker 1: sleep quality and duration decline the older we get recovery
Speaker 1: took longer. On top of all that, she began navigating
Speaker 1: men pause, hot flashes, joint pain, staccato sleep patterns. Then,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, she crashed and hid her head
Speaker 1: on a rock during a trail ride, suffering a traumatic
Speaker 1: brain injury that left her with a host of symptoms depression, anxiety, headaches.
Speaker 1: For Rush, her crucial change came in the period after
Speaker 1: the accident, when she began concentrating on the mental aspect
Speaker 1: of training and recovery as well. She entered therapy, and
Speaker 1: after years as a self proclaimed naysayer of meditation, she
Speaker 1: began regularly practicing suade after she looked into the research.
Speaker 1: Functional MRI studies have found meditation leads to changes in
Speaker 1: brain structure and function, including increased gray matter density, which
Speaker 1: is associated with improved memory and emotional regulation, and altered
Speaker 1: brain activity patterns, which can enhance focus and resilience under stress.
Speaker 1: Meditating can be particularly helpful for athletic performance. A twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four men A study in Frontiers and Psychology found
Speaker 1: mindfulness training reducing athletes anxiety, improves performance and boosts what's
Speaker 1: known as fluency, the optimal competitive psychological state. Where the
Speaker 1: athlete's attention is entirely centered on the task. It doesn't
Speaker 1: really cost anything to meditate, Rush says, and especially for
Speaker 1: a hard changing athlete, it's really interesting. It's cool to
Speaker 1: practice sitting still for ten minutes. Rush began to realize
Speaker 1: the value of that processing time. Long training rides, which
Speaker 1: she embarks on without headphones, became moving meditation. Along the way,
Speaker 1: she shifted her mindset, focusing on finding the joy in
Speaker 1: sport instead of trying her identity and self worth, tying
Speaker 1: her identity and self worth to her performance. She reminded
Speaker 1: herself that she does this because it is fun, and
Speaker 1: it feels good and I feel better when I am
Speaker 1: doing it. She also looked to reframe the pain, darkness,
Speaker 1: and trauma of her concussion recovery, which stretched on for
Speaker 1: years as an emotional growth opportunity. Mindfulness helped, so did
Speaker 1: self reflection. Rush became a frequent journaler, logging her workouts,
Speaker 1: reactions and thoughts in a small note book. It's a
Speaker 1: practice now embraced by many top athletes, including Katie Ledecky,
Speaker 1: Michael Phelps, and Simone Biles, and studies show it helps
Speaker 1: with problem solving, emotional regulation and competitive stress and enhances
Speaker 1: athletic performance. In Rush's case, she says, the key step
Speaker 1: is going back and re reading her entries. She compares
Speaker 1: it to being your own coach or therapist. Is actually
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting way to see what's surfacing up for you.
Speaker 1: Rush says, that's what a good coach would do, That's
Speaker 1: what a good therapist would do. Is just to ask
Speaker 1: the right questions. She continues, As I get older, I'm
Speaker 1: starting to learn that I can ask myself the right
Speaker 1: questions and be like, what was great about that experience
Speaker 1: and just kind of reflect on it a little bit?
Speaker 1: Or why was I in such a bad mood after
Speaker 1: my run to day? Oh? Well, I wasn't really focused.
Speaker 1: I was distracted by work to day. At fifty seven, Rush,
Speaker 1: who lives near the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho, values quality
Speaker 1: over quantity. Chaffin takes off two days a week and
Speaker 1: when she works out, she does interval training, but it's
Speaker 1: the internal habits, the moments of pause, the willingness to
Speaker 1: reflect that now guide her performance. Who cares how fast
Speaker 1: you run a ten k? She says, the most important
Speaker 1: part of being an athlete is to feel good and
Speaker 1: to be able to get up and off the floor
Speaker 1: to hang out with your friends and pick up your grandkids.
Speaker 1: These days, mindfulness isn't something she squeezes in between training sessions.
Speaker 1: It is the training Why it's never too late for
Speaker 1: a new favorite sport. What do you do when your
Speaker 1: body no longer allows you to participate in the sports
Speaker 1: you love. Growing up on the North side of Dublin,
Speaker 1: Dear Kennedy played Gaelic football in rugby. In his thirties,
Speaker 1: he had a family and a full time job as
Speaker 1: a plumber. Honest work, but not easy on the body.
Speaker 1: As sports injuries mounted, he traded the crash and dash
Speaker 1: of rugby for running and cycling, entering his first Iron
Speaker 1: Man at the age of thirty nine. Still all that
Speaker 1: pounding on his joints built up. He began experiencing swelling
Speaker 1: in his knees and hips. I wasn't able to run
Speaker 1: any more because the consequences would be two or three
Speaker 1: days in bed. He says. Cycling was good, but the
Speaker 1: hills were killing me. When Kennedy was forty, his doctor
Speaker 1: diagnosed arthritis in his right hip and knee. Surgeries followed,
Speaker 1: but Kennedy couldn't avoid the inevitable. A hip replacement awaited,
Speaker 1: scheduled a year and a half out in twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: During this time, his mental health took a hit. He
Speaker 1: turned to antidepressants alongside anti inflammatories. I had no way
Speaker 1: of exercising correctly, he says, I'd lost my outlet. For
Speaker 1: any one, this can be a dark time. Not only
Speaker 1: do you lose the myriad physical benefits of e XA exercise,
Speaker 1: from the orphan rush to improved sleep, but the psychological
Speaker 1: hit is profound. A twenty twenty three analysis in the
Speaker 1: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found a
Speaker 1: direct link between injuries and depression in athletes. Kennedy needed
Speaker 1: to do something with his lower body out of commission
Speaker 1: until surgery, until only one sport remained for Kennedy, swimming.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the buoyancy of water, the stress on joints
Speaker 1: is significantly reduced. Even though we do tell people that
Speaker 1: walking and running can actually help with arthritis, says researcher
Speaker 1: Hirofumi Tanaka, referencing studies that show weight bearing exercises in
Speaker 1: moderation can strengthen bones, the pain is often too much.
Speaker 1: Water allows you to exercise fairly strenuously without that discomfort. Indeed,
Speaker 1: decades of research have shown that swimming is one of
Speaker 1: the most effective and sustainable forms of exercise for older adults,
Speaker 1: offering cardiovascular, muscular, and joint health benefits with many injury risk.
Speaker 1: A friend recommended to Kennedy that he go to the
Speaker 1: forty Foot, a historic swimming spot south of Dublin from
Speaker 1: which people have launched into the frigid sea since the
Speaker 1: days of author James Joyce. Kennedy's first reaction, as he recalls,
Speaker 1: you're off your rocker, no way still one gray morning,
Speaker 1: he tried it in a wet suit. He eased into
Speaker 1: the waves and boomed. The cold walloped him my hands,
Speaker 1: my face, he says. I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is crazy. Then he got out and he felt better.
Speaker 1: I got a lot of relief out of it, mentally
Speaker 1: and physically. He says. Part of that was the exercise,
Speaker 1: but Kennedy's choice of where and how to do it
Speaker 1: also mattered. Immersion in cold water produces a host of
Speaker 1: physical reactions, including a huge spike in dopamine. Rigorous studies
Speaker 1: are lacking, but a number of preliminary and anecdotal studies
Speaker 1: show that it might also help with mental health and depression.
Speaker 1: A twenty twenty three study in Biology found that after
Speaker 1: cold water water exposure, participants felt more active, alert, attentive,
Speaker 1: proud and inspired, and less distressed and nervous. In Kennedy's case,
Speaker 1: he kept coming back swimming out to a set of
Speaker 1: boys at seven a m. Soon enough he shed the wetsuit.
Speaker 1: Onlookers told him he must be mad, but he upped
Speaker 1: his mileage. Adding in pool swimming, he joined an informal
Speaker 1: group of like minded cold water acolytes. The sports gave
Speaker 1: him an outlet, a community, and a purpose. Again, the
Speaker 1: blast of feel good chemicals and other potential benefits like
Speaker 1: immune system strengthening was a bonus. Around twenty twelve, Kennedy
Speaker 1: heard about a new extreme sport, ice swimming. It's just
Speaker 1: what it sounds like, swimming in waters at forty one
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit or lower in just a latex cap, a
Speaker 1: regular swimsuit and goggles. This concludes readings from National Geographic
Speaker 1: Magazine for to day. Your reader has been Mercia. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, Keep on listening and have a great day.