Problems of the Fight for Longevity

Abstract

World literature is quite enriched with factual material concerning the phenomena of ageing. But this material refers merely to statements concerning the development of processes of ageing under the common way of life of the old, consisting in sparing one's self, rest and the resulting behaviour of considerable immobilization and lack of functional loading. It proved that the fundamental phenomena consist in involution and atrophy of the tissues and organ systems of the human organism. The basic process of involution and atrophy take place, as is well-known, in the musculature which decreases by roughly 40 % , in the liver (50 % ) , in the kidneys (50% ), in the brain, etc. By their nature these are phenomena of partial death in the still living organism. As to the cause of this atrophy and involution there is the experimentally substantiated contention of the Harkov school of Nagorni and co-workers ( 3 ) that the intensity of the processes of self-repair (autorenovation) in the organism declines with age. It is believed that these processes of involution and atrophy are irrevocable, law-conformed phenomena. In our investigations we formulated the problem as follows: if the phenomena of senile involution are inevitable, a fatal regularity, then in persons over 55-60 years of age, functional loading with physical exercises should not lead to muscular hypertrophy or to commensurate physiologic enlargement and hypertrophy of the heart as this is regularly the case in young age ( 10). In order to verify this, healthy adults over 55-60 years of age were systematically trained with suitable exercises, which are known to cause muscular hypertrophy in the young ( 1 ) . The result was striking. Following 6 to 12 months of exercise hyperthrophy of the functionally loaded muscles was observed in adults as well. Their strength performance substantially increased too. We are still in the beginning of these studies. We are not in a position to state at present the degree of this hypertrophy as compared with young people, but of import is the fact itself: at functional loading with physical exercises, instead of the usual atrophy in men of advanced