Septuagenarians with the bodies of 25-year-olds

This septuagenarian (76 year old) author of this MindBlog always enjoys coming across reports of research, such as the work of Trappe and collaborators, which is pointed to in an article by Gretchen Reynolds. The studies focused on men and women who had taken up exercise as a recreational hobby during the running and exercise booms of the 1970s, on averaging exercising 5 day/wk for 7 h/wk over the past 52 ± 1 yr. From Reynolds:

Using local advertisements and other recruitment methods, they found 28 of them, including seven women, each of whom had been physically active for the past five decades. They also recruited a second group of age-matched older people who had not exercised during adulthood and a third group of active young people in their 20s...when the researchers compared the active older people’s aerobic capacities to those of established data about “normal” capacities at different ages, they calculated that the aged, active group had the cardiovascular health of people 30 years younger than themselves.

The abstract of the research article by Trappe and collaborators notes measurements of levels of muscle capillarization and aerobic enzyme activity 20%-90% greater than in non-exercising controls.