Good News for Joggers

Joggers -- like religious fanatics --must be endowed with an abundance of faith. They assume that physical exercise is good for them, but there has been relatively little scientific evidence to back them up. Now Herbert A. deVries, a University of Southern California physical-education professor, has conducted controlled before-and-after tests and has found, he contends, that exercise makes the bodies of septuagenarians act like those of 40-year-olds.

Gathering 41 far from athletic oldsters ranging in age from 50 to 87, deVries gave them complete physical examinations, tested reactions, then put them through hour-long workouts three times a week. Puffing at first, the late-blooming physical culturists engaged in calisthenics, jogging, stretching and water exercises. Within six weeks the difference between the exercisers and a nonexercising group of 26 men in the same age range was profound.

Repetitions of the tests showed that deVries' subjects averaged a 4.9% drop in body fat, a 6% reduction in diastolic blood pressure, a 9.2% rise in maximum oxygen consumption (the best single index of vigor, according to deVries), and a 7.2% increase in the strength of their 'arms. Perhaps more important, if more debatable, was deVries' conclusion from measuring the electrical activity of muscles. He equates these pulses with nervous tension and says that his exercisers cut tension by 15%.

Early results were reported to the U.S. Health, Education and Welfare Department's Administration on Aging, which finances his work. DeVries adds the usual warning that indiscriminate, unsupervised exercise may be dangerous to potential heart-attack victims. By June he hopes to have laid a foundation for individual exercise prescriptions. "If we can develop the beginning of a pharmacopoeia of exercise," he said, "we will accomplish what we set out to do." And hearten panting joggers as well.

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