Minimum Exercise For A Longer Life

-
Physical activity promotes health, and for years, several public health bodies –- including the American Heart Association, US Centers for Disease Control, and the World Health Organization –- have recommended getting 30 minutes of moderate exercise, 5 or more times per week. Surprisingly, though, only a couple of more recent major studies have examined how exercise relates to longevity, and how much you should do to lengthen your life.

The research: In 2007, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) looked at more than 250,000 men and women between the ages of 50 and 71, and confirmed that the standard exercise recommendations did improve subjects’ longevity. An average of 30 minutes of moderate activity, 5 times or more a week, gave participants a 27% lower risk of dying during the study period, while more vigorous exercise (20 minutes, 3 or more times a week), dropped the risk of death by 32%.

In other Words, even if you don't exercise adding more walking to your routine every day can add to your general health. You will increase your blood flow which will increas the performance of all the organs. Without activity your body functions will slow down to a crawl and that's what ages your body. Most people think that the number of years you have been living is a measure of your age. But it's inactivity that ages your body. Doctors have found that some of their patients in there middle 40's, actual have a body that functions like a 60-year-old and some patients with a body of a 30-year-old. You body won't age if you don't let it age.

The problem is, not enough people are meeting that threshold of activity. In North America, less than half the population exercises the recommended amount, and in east Asian countries like China, Japan, and Taiwan, it’s only one in five. Because of this, a group of epidemiologists from Taiwan and Texas set out to answer the question: what minimum dose of exercise could improve a person’s lifespan?
The result? A very large cohort study tracking more than 416,000 men and women, between 1996 and 2008. Their findings were published in 2011, in Lancet.

Study subjects were questioned about their regular exercise, including how much they did, how often, and how intensely: light (walking), moderate (brisk walking), medium-vigorous (jogging), or high vigorous (running).

The findings: People who did a daily average of just 15 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise (like brisk walking) 6 times per week (total of 92 minutes per week) lived an average of 3 years longer than those who were inactive. For people getting the amount of exercise recommended globally -- that is, 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise 5 or more times per week -- the benefit was 4 years’ longer life expectancy.

The longevity-boosting effects held true for both men and women, across all age groups, even accounting for confounding health factors like obesity, smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol levels. That means the benefit of exercise was consistent, even when overweight subjects did not lose pounds by exercising, suggesting it’s better to be active regardless of weight, as opposed to thin and inactive.

Less heart disease and cancer: Cardiovascular disease, like heart attack and stroke, is the number one killer of both men and women in North America. Both low and moderate-intensity exercise cut the risk of cardiovascular disease by 20%.
The researchers stress that cancer, too, was avoided by the shorter duration of exercise, a significant fact in east Asia, where cancer is by far the leading cause of death. One in nine cancer deaths were averted with just 15 minutes of daily moderate-intensity exercise.

These results suggest that if people doing little or no activity now were to begin adding just 15 minutes a day of brisk walking, 6 days a week, one in six deaths from any cause could be postponed. That potential benefit ranks with a successful tobacco control program in the general population, say the researchers.

Finally, though the study was conducted in Taiwan, one of the authors insists there’s no reason the results can’t be extrapolated to show the benefit of even small amounts of exercise to all populations. Xifeng Wu, an epidemiologist from the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas, told me that ethnicity should make no difference, because physical activity has been proven beneficial to overall health, regardless of nationality.

Furthermore, she adds, this minimum threshold of exercise for greater longevity is an easier sell for health officials.
"Compared to the global recommendations of 30 minutes a day," she says, "the 15 minutes of exercise per day is easier to achieve."

Maybe that brisk walk during lunch hour isn't such a bad idea.

If you really want to lose the extra flab you can get help, I write 4 blogs and I’ve written two E-books. Read some of my other blog posts.

gettingtoahealthyweight.blog
idropped40pounds.wordpress.com
howbaddoyouwanttoloseweight.blogspot.com

E-books are the easiest and cheapest way to learn about any subject without groping through hundreds of website looking for the material you want.
My first e-book is “HowBadDoYouWantToLoseWeight” and it sells for $2.99 on most online bookstores like Amazon.com, BN.com, iBook, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, and Gardner books in the U.K.

My second e-book is available in the same stores. And on smashwords.com. If you use the Smashwords' promotional code You can get my second book for $1.99 (TL96R). Just type in the search line “getting to a healthy weight”.

  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's the Mediterranean Diet?

-
Image
The Mediterranean diet is based on the traditional foods eaten by people living in the Mediterranean region, especially Greece. It's loaded with healthy foods and research findings suggest following this diet may help reduce some of the risk factors for heart disease.  According to the Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust, the Mediterranean diet was introduced in 1993 by Oldways, Harvard School of Public Health and the World Health Organization.  The diet includes: Olives and olive oil Whole grains, mostly in bread and cereal rather than pasta Very little red meat Fish and seafood Some cheese, but less milk Lots of vegetables and fruit Plenty of legumes and nuts A little red wine The Mediterranean diet is high in fiber and antioxidants from vegetables, legumes and nuts, far greater than the typical Western diet, and low in saturated fat. Very little red meat is eaten in this region, and milk consumption is limited as well, exc...
Read more

Changing Your Life To Lose Weight

-
Image
I can let you in on the ultimate secret for successfully making a change in your life. A century’s worth of psychological research reveals an interesting paradox in who we are. On the one hand, once we reach adulthood our basic personalities remain unchanged for the rest of our lives. We keep doing the same things—and feeling the same ways—over and over. But, on the other hand, every day we change our behavior drastically in response to different environments. Most of us are one person at work, for example, and another person at home. It is easier to change our environment than to change ourselves. So, if you want to change yourself, change your environment. Said differently: Whenever possible, don’t try to fight temptations – avoid them! The easiest way to make a change in your life is to modify the world around you in ways that will naturally drive you toward making, and maintaining, the change you want. There are many ways to change your environment, but let’s focus...
Read more

Cancer and High Protein Diets

-
On the Fox TV Network the other night, one of the big stories was about high protein diets. A new study has shown a link between the over consumption of animal protein and how it can stimulate the growth of cancer cells. It seems we all have cancer cells but they don’t normally grow, unless we consume too much animal fat, dairy or fats from processed foods. Before I continue I want to explain about the link to cancer. After all, Man has been eating red meat for millions of years, right. That's true but todays red meat is not the same. Most red meat that we buy in the supermarket comes from Steers that have been raised in feed lots on a grain diet that is full of hormones and other chemicals that shorten the growing time and put more fat on the animal. These hormones and other chemicals stay in the meat and what you're buying will contain the chemicals that the animal ate. Normally a grass feed Steer that lives on the range in big herds will take 18 to 20 months to grow to ...
Read more