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Tuesday, October 15, 2002

By Gary Rotstein, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

If Pittsburgh hosts the national Senior Olympics in 2005, it will bring thousands of people to the city as walking, running and swimming examples of healthy living after age 50.

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Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine found that participants in the last summer games scored high in nearly every key category of physical and mental health.

The 2,599 senior athletes who were surveyed in Baton Rouge, La., were not immune from high blood pressure, knee osteoarthritis, back and neck pain and other maladies commonly associated with aging, but their frequency of such problems was generally less than for others their age.

"They were physically in better health, and their vitality and emotional mental health were much better," said Dr. Molly Vogt, associate professor of orthopedic surgery and epidemiology who headed the research project.

Officials from Pitt's School of Medicine and UPMC Health System have been among the biggest proponents of having Pittsburgh host the summer Senior Olympics, touting the positive influence it could provide for the area's aging population.

The board of the National Senior Games Association voted tentatively Saturday to place the 2005 event in Pittsburgh.

The decision is subject to approval of a contract between the association and a local organizing committee. The games are held every two years for some 10,000 athletes, with Hampton Roads, Va., the host in 2003.

The researchers plan to continue their study at the May-June games in Virginia, with a particular focus on the types of injuries sustained by senior athletes and how they recover from them.

As a group, the senior athletes are far better educated than others their age, with nearly a third having not just a four-year college degree but additional schooling such as a master's degree.

More than 95 percent reported being regularly engaged in sports as teen-agers and more than 85 percent as young adults, dispelling any notion that they only jumped off the couch late in life.

"These individuals have a lifetime pattern of physical activity," Vogt said. "This was especially true for the men, but also far more of the women than you might have expected."

In listing their medical problems, 25 percent reported low back pain; 23 percent high blood pressure, 15 percent knee osteoarthritis; 12 percent neck pain; and 10 percent heart disease.

Just over 4 percent reported depression, far lower than the studies estimating depression levels at between 10 percent and 25 percent for older adults, Vogt said. Bone density levels, meanwhile, were higher than among the general population.

Some of the findings dovetail with results of prior surveys of senior olympians done from 1989 to 1999 by the St. Louis College of Pharmacy.

Nearly three-fourths of men and one-half of women surveyed at the 1999 games said they had been on high school sports teams. On the other hand, three-fourths of women and two-thirds of men also said they began fitness activity in at least one new sport after age 50.

Patrick Fontane, director of the college's Office for Research on Aging, said the participants used fewer medications than most people in their age group and tend to view themselves favorably with a sense of "competitive health."

"It's kind of demonstrating by their behavior the fact that they are more healthy than their peers who are not doing this," Fontane said. "It's like the youngsters who strut around preening at the mall, trying to show what good genetic material they're made of."

Phil Godfrey, vice president of the National Senior Games Association, said the draft version of the Pitt research report about health confirmed the view long held by the association.

"Participating in an active lifestyle -- in our case, participating in sports -- is going to lead to a healthier, higher quality of life," Godfrey said.

He acknowledged, however, that the senior olympians are hardly a cross section, and have other factors benefiting their health as an overwhelmingly white, well-educated, middle-class population.

"It's great that we're reaching people who are highly educated. The bad news is that we're not reaching a large segment of the demographic that needs help too," Godfrey said, noting that discussions are under way with national groups that could help the Senior Olympics draw more interest among minority and rural populations.