The functional ability of older people is nowadays better when it is compared to that of people at the same age three decades ago, suggest the findings of a new study conducted at the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland.
The study compared the physical and cognitive performance of people nowadays between the ages of 75 and 80 with that of the same-aged people in the 1990s.
“Performance-based measurements describe how older people manage in their daily life, and at the same time, the measurements reflect one’s functional age,” says the principal investigator of the study, Professor Taina Rantanen.
Among men and women between the ages of 75 and 80, muscle strength, walking speed, reaction speed, verbal fluency, reasoning, and working memory are nowadays significantly better than they were in people of the same age born earlier….
