Department of Health and Exercise Science, Wake Forest University, Worrell Professional Center 2164B, Winston-Salem, NC 27109, USA.
Department of Internal Medicine Section of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Blvd, Winston-Salem, NC 27157, USA.
Exp Gerontol. 2022 Jan;157:111634. doi: 10.1016/j.exger.2021.111634. Epub 2021 Nov 23.
Participating in sufficient levels of physical activity is important for sustaining health and quality of life across the age span. The United States Physical Activity Guidelines recommend individuals of all ages "move more, more often" by frequently engaging in aerobic activity while avoiding prolonged bouts of sitting. This is indicative of a slow shift in focus in the study of active aging that has occurred in the last two decades. Historically, researchers interested in the influence of physical activity on older adults' health and quality of life focused on discrete sustained bouts of intense activity (i.e., structured exercise). More recently the widespread usage of accelerometers contributed to a large body of evidence demonstrating that long periods spent sedentary were associated with a host of negative health outcomes ranging from poorer cardiometabolic health to poorer physical functioning and elevated risk of death. These findings often persisted when controlling for time spent in higher-intensity physical activity, spurring separate fields of intervention research concerned with promoting exercise or reducing sedentary time. Novel data emerging in recent years on the importance of an individual's overall activity profile (i.e., amount and patterning of light and moderate-to-vigorous activity) has driven yet another shift in focus toward interventions focused explicitly on movement profiles. In this narrative review, we discuss the evolution of thought regarding older adults' physical activity behaviors. We highlight successes and challenges in first promoting structured and prolonged exercise, later in targeting sedentary behavior, and most recently in attempting to intervene on activity profiles. We end our review by highlighting current gaps in research and important future directions.
参与足够水平的身体活动对于维持整个年龄段的健康和生活质量非常重要。美国身体活动指南建议所有年龄段的人“多运动，更频繁”，通过经常进行有氧运动，同时避免长时间坐着不动。这表明在过去二十年中，积极老龄化研究的焦点发生了缓慢转变。历史上，对身体活动对老年人健康和生活质量影响感兴趣的研究人员关注的是离散的持续高强度活动（即结构化锻炼）。最近，加速度计的广泛使用为大量证据提供了支持，这些证据表明，长时间久坐与许多负面健康结果相关，从较差的心血管代谢健康到较差的身体功能和死亡风险增加。当控制更高强度身体活动的时间时，这些发现往往仍然存在，这促使了分别关注促进运动或减少久坐时间的干预研究领域的发展。近年来新兴的关于个体整体活动模式（即轻度到剧烈活动的数量和模式）重要性的新数据，再次推动了关注明确针对运动模式的干预措施的焦点转变。在这篇叙述性评论中，我们讨论了关于老年人身体活动行为的思维演变。我们强调了在最初促进结构化和长期运动、后来针对久坐行为以及最近试图干预活动模式方面的成功和挑战。最后，我们的评论强调了当前研究中的差距和重要的未来方向。
