{"id":8671,"date":"2022-08-05T04:13:54","date_gmt":"2022-08-05T04:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/an-unconventional-training-idea-for-older-women\/"},"modified":"2022-08-05T04:13:54","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T04:13:54","slug":"an-unconventional-training-idea-for-older-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/an-unconventional-training-idea-for-older-women\/","title":{"rendered":"An Unconventional Training Idea for Older Women"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A new paper\u00a0in the\u00a0Journal of Sports Sciences<\/em>, in setting up what turns out to be a highly unusual and interesting experiment, casually drops this little fact-bomb in its opening sentence: \u201cThe cardiac phenotype of a substantial fraction of the population, i.e., mature women, is mainly unresponsive to endurance training.\u201d<\/p>\n Wow. The hearts of mature women are \u201cmainly unresponsive\u201d?! That seems like kind of a big deal, since the health-promoting effects of endurance training are an article of faith in this column. So it\u2019s worth starting out by acknowledging the\u00a0chronic underrepresentation of women\u00a0in exercise science studies. Exactly how women respond to a given training program, and how that changes with age, remains uncertain because it hasn\u2019t been studied enough.<\/p>\n In fact, there\u2019s some history to this claim. Back in 2019, two of the authors of the new study, Candela Diaz-Canestro and David Montero of the University of Calgary,\u00a0published a meta-analysis\u00a0looking at the extent to which men and women can raise their\u00a0VO2 max, a key marker of aerobic fitness, through endurance training. Their conclusion: for a given dose of endurance training, men got a bigger VO2 max boost than women by about 2 ml\/min\/kg\u2014a difference that corresponds to a 7 to 9 percent reduction in premature death.<\/p>\n Following that study, a group of researchers from the Mayo Clinic wrote\u00a0a letter to the editor of the journal\u00a0suggesting that the difference was mainly present in older women, not all women. Diaz-Canestro and Montero\u00a0didn\u2019t agree, but in 2020 they published\u00a0another meta-analysis, focusing this time on how the structure and function of the heart changes in response to endurance training. Once again, they saw bigger adaptations in men than women\u2014but this time, they did see evidence that the difference showed up primarily in older women. Something, perhaps related to the hormonal changes that accompany menopause, seems to alter how women respond to training later in life.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the background that sets up the new study, from Diaz-Canestro, Montero, and Christoph Siebenmann. Their goal is to figure out a way to enable postmenopausal women to reap the full benefits of endurance training\u2014and their suggestion is to donate blood. A typical blood donation takes about 10 percent of your blood, or 500 milliliters. This is pretty much the opposite of\u00a0altitude training: you lose 10 percent of your oxygen-carrying red blood cells, and consequently your aerobic fitness drops immediately. But the additional stress on your heart, in combination with vigorous endurance training, could provide the stimulus needed to improve fitness even in postmenopausal women.<\/p>\n When you withdraw 500 mL of blood, about 60 percent of it is plasma, and 40 percent is red blood cells. The plasma, which is the liquid part of the blood, is easy to restore. Within 24 to 48 hours of a blood donation, you\u2019ll have added enough plasma to bring your total blood volume pretty much back up to normal. But now your blood is diluted, because there are still fewer red blood cells to carry oxygen in any given volume of blood pumped by your heart. In women, red blood cells may not return to normal for 9 to 12 weeks. During that time, your heart will have to pump a little harder to supply oxygen for a given level of exertion\u2014and perhaps, as a result, it will get correspondingly stronger.<\/p>\n For the study, 15 moderately active women between the ages of 52 and 75, all postmenopausal, agreed to have 10 percent or their blood volume removed. Then, after three weeks to allow partial recovery of blood values, they completed an eight-week endurance training protocol that involved two to five interval sessions per week on a stationary bike.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what the oxygen use (VO2) looked like at different heart rates. For each exercise intensity, the white bar shows the baseline value, the striped bar shows immediately after the blood withdrawal, and the black bar shows after eight weeks of training:<\/p>\n