Exercise Can Add 3 Years to Life Expectancy
The above headline is from a
November 15, 2005 InteliHealth article reporting on 2 recent studies that
show that on average people who regularly exercise can add up to three
years to their lives. The study, performed at the Erasmus Medical
Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, noted that something as simple as brisk
walking a half-hour a day, can positively affect the heart and can have a
profound effect on life expectancy.
Dr.
Oscar Franco, co-author of one of the studies noted, "Three years of extra
life: It's a very clear message that makes it easy to grasp what might be
the consequences of a sedentary lifestyle." The studies showed that
the increase in life expectancy was a direct result of the positive effect
on the heart.
In one of the studies
researchers grouped 4,121 people into three levels of physical activity:
low, medium and high. The results showed that the life expectancy at
age 50 for the medium activity group was 1.5 years longer than for the low
activity group. However, the high activity group lived an average of 3.5
years longer.
The second study, conducted
at the University of Florida, was conducted on a "real world"
basis tracking
people in their daily activities and the amount of exercise they performed.
The study noted that people usually exercised considerably less than they
actually intended, but still received the health benefits from the exercise
they did do. Lead investigator Michael Perri commented, "If you aim for
exercising every day, you'll probably do four or five days. If you aim
for three or four days, you're likely to get maybe two days done."
Dr. Martha Gulati, a
cardiologist and fitness researcher at Northwestern University concluded, "We
need to know how to prescribe this and how to implement this. If we don't,
we're never going to get to the point where we do prevention. We're always
going to be treating chronic disease." |