- A new study suggests that starting to exercise as an adult can protect your body from heart disease and early death, even if you were inactive when you were younger.
- Individuals who started exercising after 40 had a similar reduction in their premature mortality risk as those who exercised all of their lives.
- Adidas Unveils Boston Marathon Jacket obesity, Running Shoes - Gear.
You run on the regular now, but if your leisure hours in your earlier years were spent more on the couch than pounding the pavement, you may wonder if your body may still end up paying that inactivity price.
Well, we have good news for you: Starting to exercise as an adult can still yield big health benefits, new research from the National Cancer Institute suggests.
Running Shoes - Gear JAMA Network Open, researchers asked more than 315,000 U.S. adults between the ages of 50 and 71 about their activity levels at four different points in their lives, including when they were teenagers and young adults.
Those who reported exercising from two to eight hours per week during each time period had 29 to 36 percent lower risk of dying from any cause during the study’s 23-year timeframe.
The fact that exercise can protect against early death isn’t that surprising. What was? Individuals who were not active earlier in their late adolescence and young adulthood—but started doing more exercise in midlife, from age 40 to 60—had similar reduction in premature mortality risk as people who had always exercised. Their heart disease and cancer risk rates were also similar to those who’d gotten activity from their teen years onward.
This was an unexpected but pleasing conclusion, according to lead author Pedro Saint-Maurice, Ph. D., in the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch of the National Cancer Institute.
More research needs to be done to determine how exercise’s benefits affect long-term health pathways, Saint-Maurice told Runner’s World, but he said it’s well established that engaging in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity can improve an individual’s metabolic profile, which includes things like electrolyte balance, kidney function, blood sugar level, and liver function. It can also reduce the likelihood of developing obesity, Running Shoes - Gear.
By lowering the chances of developing major health problems like that, early mortality risk drops as well—and, as this study finds, that can happen at any age.
“These findings suggest that it is beneficial to stay active throughout adulthood, but that if you’re in your 40s to 60s and have not been active for a long time, it’s not too late to start exercising now,” Saint-Maurice said.
