New study reveals exactly what age we reach our physical peak
Scientists have figured out at what age everything related to your physical performance starts to go downhill
William Morgan
When you are young, the inevitability of getting old and losing that spring in your step is always somewhere over the horizon. But a major 47-year study suggest that most of us hit our peak before we're even middle aged.
While many of us try not to think about reaching that age where your body starts to betray you and stops bouncing back from minor injuries, but according to a lengthy study funded by the Swedish Research Council, that point of no return is not quite so distant.
After following the physical capacity of an evenly gender split group of 427 people over half a century, the study found that the age at which most people peak physically is actually from 35 onwards.
The team of Swedish scientists were able to establish that this decline in physical capability accelerates as we get older, with aging causing a progressive decline in skeletal muscle mass.
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But they did find that one habit can slow this process.
While this peak age of 35 did not change for those who regularly exercise , the research did find that being in good shape slows the rate of decline.
So staying in shape is still important for your physical health, but no amount of time in the gym or going for a run will return you to that level of fitness you had as a teen or in your twenties.
Previous research has found a similar cut off for peak physical performance among top athletes ScienceAlert reports, with most sports people seeing their ability decline from 30 onwards.
This implies that the mechanism through which our body begins to lose muscle mass might even begin many years before our physical performance actually starts to decline, with exercise having little impact on this process.
Published in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle, this new study is more representative of the general population, rather than elite athletes.
Yet, their findings reflected the same muscle loss process found in previous studies of sports players.
Most research into this field has involved studies of people at a particular moment in their lives, rather than a longitudinal study, which tracks the health of individual over the course of their lives.
This study tracked hundreds of people from 1974, when they were 16, and checked in on their physical strength and fitness at five key intervals - 16, 27, 34, 52, and 63.
They found that muscle mass in men and women peaked at 27 and 19 respectively. After this age, your muscles will start to decline by between 0.2 and 0.5 percent per year. And by the time people in the study reached the age of 63, each of their physical fitness results had dropped by between 30 and 48 percent.
But, those who had exercised heavily from the age of 16 still had better metrics across the board as they aged, even if they still declined from the age of 35.
Lead study author Maria Westerståhl explained: "It is never too late to start moving. Our study shows that physical activity can slow the decline in performance, even if it cannot completely stop it.
"Now we will look for the mechanisms behind why everyone reaches their peak performance at age 35, and why physical activity can slow performance loss but not completely halt it."