Why Men Move Slower as they Age
- Saturday Oct 18,2008 12:59 PM
- By Mike Lopez
- In Science and Nature
Ever wonder why older men move slower than the younger? Ask this question to a bunch of people and the most common answer is because old men have arthritis while younger men do not. While there is some truth to that, it’s not really the entire story.
Another factor discovered by scientists is a a fatty sheath of insulation in the brain that coats nerve axons which also allows for signaling bursts called myelin. What scientists did was gather a group of men from age 23 to 80 and asked them to tap their fingers as fast as they can. At the same time, the researchers also did brain scans to measure the amount of myelin in each subject’s brain.
Guess what? Lower levels of myelin go hand-in-hand with slower tapping speeds. They also found that the amount of myelin reduces dramatically after age 39.
The findings are detailed in the online version of the journal Neurobiology of Aging.