When I am old I shall wear purple weightbelt

“Women live longer than men, but our bodies bail out on us sooner.”

– Miriam Nelson, Ph.D., Exercise physiologist and author of Strong Women

“Go, Granny, go!”

– The Beach Boys, harmony and surfing physiologists

The Beach Boys had it right years ago when they were exhorting “Granny” to stay active. A growing body of recent research is showing that a woman’s health as she ages is in large part determined by whether she exercises regularly. Put another, more compelling, way: Exercise will determine how well most American women will live as they age.

The potential differences in a woman’s life after 50 if she exercises regularly and appropriately are not merely matters of being “buff” or strong enough to wrestle an ox onto the dinner table. They are palpable and stark differences in quality of life. Regular exercise, and its associated control of weight, has been shown to markedly reduce a woman’s risk for heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and to decrease the immobilizing effects of degenerative arthritis on the joints. Barbells are not just for boys anymore, but for women of all ages; weight training has been shown to be helpful in reducing the risk of falls and maintaining independence in women as old as 90. Exercise has beneficial effects on cognitive function, emotional health, outlook on life and helps a woman stay frisky (no data, just my guess).

Regular exercise can help determine the following:

. how long a woman will remain independent in old age;

. whether she will spend huge parts of her retirement income on prescription medications for ailments preventable by exercise and diet (especially since the closest thing the Bush administration seems likely to produce as a prescription drug benefit for Medicare patients is bus tickets to Canada to buy medications less expensively);

. risk for fractures from osteoporosis;

. how likely she is to suffer from heart disease and/or diabetes.

The implications of these potential differences in American women as they age are more profound than the social impact of simply having elderly women around who will be able to successfully arm wrestle their spouses for the TV remote. Exercise will partially determine how much care we will have to provide for our aging women and how much they will be able to provide for themselves, and how much their health care will cost. The social and economic implications of a healthier generation of aging women are enormous.

That is not to overstate the role of exercise in quality of life. A woman’s muscle tone will not protect her from poverty, drunk drivers, breast cancer, or the devastating health effects of cigarette smoking. That being said, every new piece of research on the issue of health aging suggests it may be impossible to overstate the importance of exercise, and impossible for women to age well without exercise.

Why write about muscle-bound mommas on the editorial page of the newspaper? In the final analysis all health is personal and political. If we want the “buffest” American women we can have we will need to support them in healthy aging. We need to change our expectations about aging, and change health care policy to encourage exercise. We need to sponsor community exercise facilities for aging women that are financially and physically accessible to all of them, and then to encourage every woman to use one. Geritol needs to make barbells as well as vitamins. We need walking paths outdoors, and more shopping malls that encourage older people to walk in them for exercise. We need young women to call up their mothers and grandmothers and invite them to the YWCA for some sweating and sociability. We need to work at it until our children can say with pride to their friends, “My grandmother can bench press more than your grandmother.”

Why focus on women? While much of this information about healthy aging is also applicable to men, women are in particular need of healthier aging. They live longer than men (the average American woman now will live to age 79), they usually have less retirement income to support themselves in old age (meaning they need to preserve their independence), and they are more susceptible than men to loss of muscle and bone as they age. If “getting old sucks,” as some say, it may do so particularly for women. Finally, the idea of elderly women working out regularly, especially with weights, is so contrary to our cultural expectations that the idea needs all of the exposure it can get.

Of course, an older woman who is not currently exercising regularly should not finish reading the newspaper today and start bench pressing the credenza. She should talk to her doctor first, plan a fitness program and then get to it. Good health is a kind of freedom everyone should have for as long as possible.

Erik Steele, D.O. is a physician in Bangor, an administrator at Eastern Maine Medical Center, and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.