Abstract
The decline of physiological functions due to aging would be promoted by shortness of physical exercise. In the present study, the authors tried to elucidate the effect of physiological effect of exercise prescription aiming at health promotion. Six healthy men of 30-47 years of age served as the subjects. The exercise imposed on them was 20 min running on a tread-mill of 3 degrees inclination, and the intensity of exercise was regulated at 2/3 Vo_2 max for each subject. Accordingly, the running speed ranged from 120 m/min to 150 m/min. The exercise was imposed on them once a day and for 5 days a week. The exercise as such have continued for more than 12.5 years, viz. 659 weeks. Due to the long term exercise habit as such, the subjects can now generally meet the energy requirement with lower level of physiologi-cal functions such as low heart rate and small lung ventilation at rest. But it was noted that there was no appreciable increase in Vo_2 max as an index of physical fitness. This fact seems to mean that the exercise habit of men in their middle and elderly age gives effect of producing excellent mechanism of physiological efficiency such as promotion of O2 uptake and O2 Supply to the tissues, augrnentation of utilizing blood lipid as energy source and moreover, increase of lactate oxidation to decrease of blood sugar consmption. On the other hand, it was suggested that the long term exercise habit of men in their middle and elderly age would sometimes result functional abnormality such as anemia or arythmia. These symptoms should be discriminated from pathological state, but the subjects would have some uncomfortable feeling. Therefore, the exercise habit such as that in the present study have some problems to be solved regarding physiological adaptation from the view-point of health promotion.
