Normal Human Aging Today and Tomorrow

The overall goal of the study is to describe systematically the process of aging. One of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging’s (BLSA) objectives is to relate aging processes to one another. It is a study of transitions: not only the transitions of normal aging, but the transitions from the usual aging process to the disease processes that sometimes accompany aging. Studies of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis are done in a section of the Gerontology Research Center’s (GRC) Laboratory of Clinical Physiology. In 1958, Nathan Shock was the chief of the Gerontology Branch, now the GRC, of the National Institutes of Health. BLSA data come from more than 1,100 volunteers aged from their twenties to their nineties who return every two years for two-and-a-half days of testing. The treadmill tests have shown, over the years, that the older heart adapts to the effects of age. Many BLSA participants do not eat the recommended dietary allowances of some vitamins and minerals.