Vigorous Exercise Like Running Linked To Longer Life And Less Disability In Old Age
 

Hi all

Just came across this report that's of interest to all of us here.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/117929.php

I guess most of us already knew or could have guessed that exercising regularly was beneficial in reducing the effects of aging. Still it's nice to have it confirmed by the scientists.

brigadon

Good find.

Odd that "back when" the experts cautioned about those over fifty starting up rigorous excersize for fear of injury, and now it is decidedly a major benefit at any age.

Seems that along the way, I would not excersize because that opportunity did not allow the right heartbeats per minute at the right duration. Now. adding walking brisly when able, if even from the parking lot, is deemed beneficial and with cumulative affect.

Getting back into using bicycling for all the many benefits at age 55, has me wondering why I ever stopped.

There are two books on the subject: Spark on the mental aspects and Younger Next Year on the physical aspects. Both recommend weight training as well as aerobics and the use of heart rate monitors.

Al

I liked this item from the article: "Runners' initial disability was 16 years later than nonrunners."
It confirms "Younger Next Year's" claim that you can shave as much as 20 years off what your body age would seem without exercise.

I think you will find nothing but believers in this forum. I'll turn 58 this month, and I am already reaping the immense benefits of 40 years of bicycling, walking, and running for exercise and transportation. Diet, exercise, mental attitude, lifestyle in general = the fountain of youth.

One has to be careful about these sorts of findings.

I do not think they made any attempt to control for the fact that people who are healthy are able to exercise. The habit of fitness may be a result of health and not the cause of health. Really sick people do not exercise because they can't.

I would think that a healthy life style would be a to one's long term health. But you can get a pretty large effect in a statistical study by just inadvertantly including unhealthy people in one group and excluding them from the other group.

That sounds like a good subject for a follow-up study. And you're right, of course.

Darn - someone's trying to be scientific and accurate.

No way. I like these biased surveys and results.

When I looked at the article, there was an ad for "Helping Seniors live an independent life at home" with one of those "life alert" buttons. And I love the phrase, "compression of morbidity". I'm going to try to use it in conversation often!

exercise will add life to your years...not necessarily years to your life...

train safe-

We don't really know if that is true or untrue.

It seems to me, for example, in the management of diabetes - a known killer if not properly cared for - that exercise likely WILL extend life. Ditto for managing obesity, blood pressure, etc.

I suspect that a decent longitudinal study will show that exercise does extend life.

I was just reading something on this subject in the Rivendell Reader and the author (not Grant Petersen) was saying that our exercise should be like back in the Cromagnon days, i.e. walk a lot, run very fast very occasionally, eat protien and veggies and not much carbo at all.

Long efforts at sustained high energy outputs (only possible while injesting large amounts of carbos) was particularly bad. It was based on how we (humans) evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, and how we've change our ways (for the worse) since the invention of agriculture (read: easy carbohydrates).

While it did all make sense, within it's own context, I really don't remember Cromagnons living all that long, i.e. 35 years was a average lifetime. Anyway, I'll try to find a link and post it here via an edit.

Rick / OCRR

Edit: Well, I thought I'd be able to find the article over on rivbike.com, but I was wrong, or at least, not searching very well . . . It's in the latest issue of the Rivendell Reader, if your bike shop has one laying about.

That's exactly my feeling Dnvr. This is one bit of science that I don't want to be critical of because I want it to be true.

However, Pat seems to have fomented a following within the group so I have emailed the emeritus Professor Fries office and asked for a copy of the original paper which will expand on his methodology for this study.

Will get back to this if I get a reply. :roflmao2:

I believe that there are a lot of people that take virtually no exercise and will live a relatively long life. As long as they stay on that couch and do not attempt to run for that bus. I would suggest that longivity is in the genes. Exercise will give you a much better quality of life for the amount of years that you have and stave off disease that would kill you earlier. Hard/extreme daily physical exercise IMHO is not always a good thing, you just need to keep moving. Look at nature, the slow steady movers [elephants/turtles] last the longest. Cheetahs? No chance. Pro athletes do not have a lifespan longer than the average.

Jim

You make a valid point, but I see no reason to avoid exercise until all of the facts are in. There are numerous well-established chemical and physiological links among diet, exercise, obesity, and illness. Exercise elevates good cholesterol and lowers bad, and it stabilizes blood sugar, as does a high-fiber diet, etc.

I don't know about pro athletes and elephants, but I'll go with the science. You are incorrect about life span. In Physical Activity and Health, figure 9.5 shows that a top tier aerobically fit man has less than 1/5 the death rate of the couch potato type. This particular study was of 25,341 men at the Cooper institute.

I've been a student of physical activity vs health for about 40 years ever since I cured my own high blood pressure with jogging.

The more ft you are, the less cancer, diabetes, cardio and other diseases you suffer. You live not only better, but you live longer. The actual data is very convincing, but one has to be aware of it.

Back to elephants. One interesting fact is the long lived elephant and the shrew (lives a year?) have about the same number of life-time heart beats. Relating human life span to either seems silly to me. That said, what happens with aerobics is that you drive yourself to very high heart rates (or should) with the net result that your none exercising heart rate goes much lower than a couch potatoes. That's not the reason for the longer life span, but an aerobically fit individual does conserve heart beats like the elephant in a sense.

What does keep you alive longer is that aerobics (and weight training) causes sufficient cell damage to stimulate the body's repair mechanisms (human growth hormones and other chemicals). Those mechanisms repair the aerobics damage plus the decay damage due to aging. You don't do the damage, the age-related decay does not get repaired and you degenerate far faster and are more prone to disease than the fit individual.

Genetics for most people is a small factor. You can suppress most negative genetic tendencies through a lifestyle of strenuous activity, reducing meat/dairy and emphasizing fresh/frozen fruits/vegetables

Al

So does anybody really care?

So if I get up early every day for 16 years and go running or something eventually I'll feel better?

Honestly, I'm thinking that, if folks don't find a shorter term benefit, a 16 year exercise program is going to fall by the wayside. How many people are paying monthly health club fees for services that they never use?

Do we have to turn everything into a job so that we can piously tell our friends that "Studies show etc.etc." What's wrong with just bicycling for fun?

What an incredible concept!

Bicycling for fun?

Naw

It's just too easy.

We humans HAVE to put facts and figures around everything we do.

Like - how many miles did you ride today? What was your average speed? Top speed? Slowest speed? How many times do you turn the crank every minute? How many hours should you rest between rides? How many days/hours/minutes/seconds/microseconds until you have a recovery ride? How long and fast should that recovery ride be? How ofeten does your heart beat when resting - when riding - when climbing hills - when slowing down - when it is 220 - age - when you are riding upside down. And on and on, ad infinitum. Check out the Roadie forum!

Ride for fun?

That would be no fun!:p

Why not do both; fun and fitness? I look around me and see a lot of old and not so old not having any fun what so ever. Matter of fact I know some who are either in pain, or have lost so much of their active brain that they are barely functional. I had a painful lifestyle until my late teens when new drugs became available.

I'll do both having been there. At 69 and after 40 years of heavy duty activity, it's been working very well on both accounts.

Al

But which came first - the chicken or the egg?

My point is that, if people don't percieve a short term benefit (fun), they'll never stick with any kind of exercise program long enough to get fit. The proof is the huge number of unused gym memberships. People join to get fit but, if they don't find fun in the process, they stop going.

I like to ride my bike. I like to go downhill fast and scare the bejeebers out of myself. I like covering big mileage and having the satisfaction of making it there and back under my own power. If there are other benefits then I will take them with a grin. Somehow, telling a bike forum that what we are doing is beneficial to our physical and emotional health is like carrying coals to Newcastle. :)

Now that makes sense...stressing the cells and body systems stimulates the bodies repair mechanisms, which also treat the decayed parts...kinda like bringing the past to the present for healing.

I think you misunderstood the study. It doesn't take 16 years to see a benefit, the physical benefits start quickly. But if they stick with it over the years the exercisers will feel 16 (20?) years younger and will (on average) start to see life restricting disabilities much later in life! That is huge.

I disagree to a point. Many people do stick with boring, un-fun exercise programs for decades - I see them at the gym every day. Many others go for it long enough to improve their fitness and then burn out. I know lots of them. I think where you are right is that many of us simply won't stick to it unless it is fun, period. Feeling fit will help motivate us but if the exercise regiment is not fun we just don't stick to it. I was that way on aerobics until I started riding -- which is fun. I noticed the physical benefits immediately - I feel much better and I lost 16 pounds and counting - but I would be hard pressed to keep it up if I didn't enjoy riding.

I work out at the gym and at home on weight equipment, and I don't find it boring and un-fun. If I did, I probably wouldn't keep it up.

However, I consider the trainer boring and un-fun, and, generally, the trainer just sits there unused.

Yeah... I follow the CroMag life-style when I've run out of food in the house. Then, I get on the bike and hunt me up a Big Mac, fries, and chocolate shake. :D They don't give me much of a struggle. The struggle comes when I try to get served at the McDonald's drive-thru window on my bike. :mad: