John Limpus

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I want to live forever! How exercise increases your active life (Part 2)

“Everyone wants to live forever but no-one wants to grow old…”

With life expectancy in the UK currently at 77, and looking to increase in line with a rising trend since the 1840’s, it appears that many of us will be blessed with a long life. However, who really wants to be average, and most importantly, how can we make sure that we grow old free from disease and in a condition that we can still enjoy ourselves later in life?

Many people look to exercise as the secret ingredient in a long and active life. With its proven record at reducing the risk of heart disease and cancer the link is obvious, but how much extra life does it really give us, which exercise is the most important, and is it too late if we don’t start until our fifties?

How big a role does exercise play in longevity?

In the well-known Harvard Alumni Study, which examined mortality rates over a 22 to 26-year period in more than 17,000 men who had attended Harvard University, life expectancy was about two years longer for those who expended 2,000 calories per week during exercise, compared to individuals who were sedentary.

Now, two years may not sound like a great deal but the research did state that these were two years of ACTIVE life, free from disease and disabling conditions. If you imagine the pain of living with cancer or heart disease for two years then this statistic starts to have more gravitas.

In addition, since 2,000 weekly calories can be consumed in about three decent workouts, it would appear that through a fairly nominal investment in exercise you CAN increase the length of your active life fairly easily. Therefore exercise is a REALISTIC solution in the fight against aging.

Ralph Paffenbarger, M.D., one of principal investigators in the Harvard Alumni Study, summarizes the benefits of exercise with a neat formula: For each hour that a person exercises, he/she gets roughly two extra hours of life! (it’s important to note that this formula only works up to about 30 hours of exercise a week, after that the effects of exercise can actually reduce your life expectancy!)

So how does exercise extend life?

So why exactly does exercise help us live longer? Blood levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) are inversely related to the risk of developing coronary heart disease (the higher the HDL-C, the lower the risk), and exercise raises HDL-C. Running just nine miles per week hikes HDL-C by 8 per cent. Running 17 weekly miles shoots HDL-C up by 12 per cent. Ambling 31 miles per week heightens HDL-C by 19 per cent. Individuals who jog just 11 to 14 miles per week can lower their risk of heart attack by 30 per cent or so.

Is it too late for me to start though?

The 1966 Dallas Bed Rest Study and Follow Up in 1996, highlighted that not only was heart health (a key determiner of our activity levels at older ages) improvable at older ages but also that AGE was less harmful to the performance of the heart than a lack of activity!

In 1966 five 20 year old healthy men had their heart performance measured prior to three weeks of strict bed rest. After this bed rest they were subjected to vigorous physical training for six weeks to see if their heart performance could return to its previous levels. The study highlighted that the bed rest had a significant effect on the performance of the heart but that it was repairable through physical exercise.

In 1996 they took the same 5 men, now aged 50-51 and measured their heart performance levels before and after a 6 month exercise program.

What they discovered was that increasing their exercise levels helped the older men achieve the same levels of heart performance that they had done as healthy young men prior to the bed rest! In fact the investigators concluded that “Three weeks of bed rest had a more profound affect on VO2 Max (a key heart performance indicator) than did three decades of aging”.

So which exercise is generally regarded as the best?

It would appear that the type of exercise you choose matters when it comes to longevity. Recent research from Finland indicates that individuals who engage in endurance activities (running, cycling, swimming, cross country skiing, walking) live about six years longer than couch potatoes.

In contrast, those who prefer team sports like basketball, ice hockey, or soccer live just four years more. And sports-active people who prefer ‘power-type’ activities, including weight lifting, field events, and sprinting, last for only two additional years.

When the research removed the health benefits  of the increased social status of many of the team sport players (many of them had better jobs and living conditions) the benefits of endurance exercise became even more convincing.

Conclusion

So it would seem that exercise really does have a positive effect on the likelihood of us all growing old gracefully. Not only can it extend our active lives by as much as two years, that’s a long time if you have cancer or heart disease, but it can also be just as effective if you start a little later in life.

With regards to which exercises are best it would seem that aerobic exercise such as running, swimming and circuit based resistance programs are most beneficial with regards to longevity purely because of the positive effects they have on heart health (remember that heart disease is the number one killer in most developed countries).

So it would seem that in the words of Gregg Keller, one of the original participants in the 1966 DAllas Bed rest Study, “There is a fountain of youth, it’s just that you have to work hard to drink from it. It’s very much a case of you get what you pay for.”