Physical Activity and Aerobic Fitness Correlate with Lowered Mortality and Longer Lives
Today I'll point out the results from recent research into the intersection between exercise and aging. It is well known that undertaking physical activity correlates with a lower risk of mortality and age-related disease, and though the details vary by age, this relationship holds up all the way into late life. Even modest levels of activity, such as cleaning and gardening and walking, appear to have a sizable impact on health and mortality risk.
When using human data researchers can typically only establish correlations between exercise and health, which leaves open the possibility that people who are more robust and would have lived longer anyway tend to exercise more often. However, in studies using mice it is quite clear that exercise is the cause of improved health and extends average (but not maximum) life span. It would be surprising to find that this was not the case in other mammals, given the degree of similarity in the cellular and biochemical responses to exertion.
The question of whether more exercise is better is an interesting one, and hard to quantify in humans. There is good evidence to suggest that the usual recommendation of 150 minutes per week is too low, for example. Elite athletes live significantly longer than the rest of the population, but it is unclear as to whether this is a reflection of that fact that only unusually robust individuals can manage to become professional athletes, or perhaps that the effect is mediated by wealth, status, or other confounding relationships. Exercise has a dose-response curve and it is presently thought that there is such a thing as too much of it as well as too little, though where exactly that line is drawn is far from settled. Exercise may be too indirect a measure, as one of the papers here suggests, and aerobic fitness may be the important determinant of mortality. For this measure, it seems that more is always better.
Better cardiorespiratory fitness leads to longer life
Researchers retrospectively studied 122,007 patients who underwent exercise treadmill testing between Jan. 1, 1991, and Dec. 31, 2014, to measure all-cause mortality relating to the benefits of exercise and fitness. The study found that increased cardiorespiratory fitness was directly associated with reduced long-term mortality, with no limit on the positive effects of aerobic fitness. Extreme aerobic fitness was associated with the greatest benefit, particularly in older patients (70 and older) and in those with hypertension.
The risk associated with poor cardiorespiratory fitness was comparable to or even exceeded that of traditional clinical risk factors, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and smoking. The study's findings emphasize the long-term benefits of exercise and fitness, even to extreme levels, regardless of age or coexistent cardiovascular disease. Several recent studies have suggested associations between extreme exercise and certain adverse cardiovascular findings, such as atrial fibrillation and coronary artery disease. However, the newly published study found that extreme fitness provided additional survival benefit over more modest levels of fitness, and that extremely fit patients lived the longest.
"We were particularly interested in the relationship between extremely high fitness and mortality. This relationship has never been looked at using objectively measured fitness, and on such a large scale."
Physical Activity Lowers Risk of Death from Heart Disease
Physical activity includes walking and other gentle forms of exercise. It is proven to improve health. Physical activity can lower the risk of many chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, several cancers, and depression. Exercise also can improve your ability to perform your daily activities and can lower your risk of death from heart disease. In frail older adults, physical activity has been shown to improve strength, balance, agility (the ability to move quickly and easily), walking speed, and muscle mass (the amount of muscle you have in your body). These are all key functions tied to frailty.
Researchers recently reviewed a number of studies about exercise in frail older adults. The review found a number of studies that showed exercise helped reduce falls, improved walking ability, improved balance or increased muscle strength. However, we still don't know whether physical activity can reduce death among frail older adults. Researchers thus recently designed a study to fill that knowledge gap by exploring whether physical activity could lower the high rate of death associated with frailty in older people.
The 3,896 study participants aged 60 years and older were selected according to sex and age. Information was collected at the participants' homes through personal interviews, and physical examinations were performed by trained personnel. Researchers assessed how much physical activity the participants did by asking whether they were generally inactive during their leisure time, or engaged in physical activity occasionally, several times a month, or several times a week.
Compared with robust participants, pre-frail and frail people had a higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease. However, being physically active was linked to a lower risk for death among pre-frail and frail individuals. What's more, deaths from cardiovascular disease in people who were physically active but also frail were similar to levels for pre-frail and inactive people. The researchers said their findings suggest that physical activity might partly reduce the increased risk of death associated with frailty in older adults.
'' What's more, deaths from cardiovascular disease in people who were physically active but also frail were similar to levels for pre-frail and inactive people.''
This demonstrates that if you get diseased you are not out of the woods and though exercising will mitigate cardivascular disease (you have to get in shape/but it means nothing/I'm thin and in shape...and you can still die/have CVD); there were still deaths even so. I have a cardiovascular disease (the deadliest/atherosclerosis), and I am definitely not doing the extreme cardio thing; it is truly not good and as said; there is a bell-shaped curve for exercice, too little it's bad, too much is just as bad (too little creates frailty while too much creates frailty by aging acceleration/studies that showed age slowing were with modest-to-intense exercice - not exhaustive. Like strong bursts are good - only, if your body is healthy enough (know your body limits, your body will tell you Stop or else you will kill yourself much faster; you want to conditioned/adapt it to harder exercice one step at a time, 'mild/regular' exercice you can do anytime but sustained/hard exercice you can't if you have CVD disease - it is Very hard on your body (which is already frail), and can hasten/destabilize the disease to make it come back/progress. As said, exercice is good only dosed, and in high throughput can kill anyone. Athletes are unique and highly 'tuned', they know their bodies and their limits (studies had been done about their VO2 Max (oxygen throuput), they have higher VO2 that regular non-atheletes and some develope Large Hearts (world cyclits and marathon runners) and some die of it), we are not all atheletes, if you are frail/had recently/have important disease do not excess stress your body with excess exercice; only, start to gradually get back to 'some' exercice (forget about the 'you Need 150 min...it's bs..'you need to get out there wethere you did a 45 min..or 300 min do some, better than nothing; of course getting close to 150 minutes is better in a full week; but when you are sick/frail with important disease you cannot do 150 min, only a 10th of that. Studies like that don'T realize that a body can break down due to overexercise and miscalcuating your forces while sick/diseased; protect your body FIRST, 'feel it', and later when better get back to some exercice. Exercice has for more postive than negative - when healthy; when UNhealthy, not as much/can be negative if overdoingg it and you need to gauge). Like anything and the old moto 'take some leave some' 'la modération a bien meilleur goût (moderation has much better taste)'.
Just a 2 cents.
PS: the effects of exercice or dependent of fitness elements: IGF is activated by exercice, mTOR too which improves musculature (mTOR controls myocytes cell and muscle fiber formation), mTOR/IGF = fitness, lack of it = frailty. IGF acts through telomerase, activating it and improving 'health status' (as was seen in exercice study that demonstrated people whom exercice regularly had about 200-400bp more than inactive non-exercicing people (which equals to about 2 or 3 years of 'rejuvenation' if you will..altough not true rejunveation as only DNA methyl clock controls that - not telomeres/telomerase. thus only a 'health' effect improvement via telomere preservation. Exercice activates hormones (IGF growth factors/hormones and thus also, testosteronic and estrogenic levels; estrogenic receptors activate telomerase (in men, testosterone is converted to estrogen (aromatase), than it activates telomerase estrogenic receptors all over body..by 'dosed' exercice effect on hormones (excessive exercise will have negative effect of reducing hormones/accelerating aging by muscle waisting/fiber destruction, again with frailty; excess IGF/mTOR activation = senescent cells). Bottom line, dose it.