Category: Exercise

This form of exercise influences our future health and longevity more than any other type of physical activity.

A study on nearly 100,000 adults has found that higher-intensity activity provides more health benefits and longer life than low-intensity physical activity.

According to physical activity guidelines, adults should be active and move more during the day.

They should do at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise, such as brisk walking, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous intensity exercise, such as running during the week.

For further health benefits, adults should undertake muscle-strengthening exercises such as cycling at least two days a week.

Past studies have suggested that moderate-to-vigorous-intensity exercise is much better for health compared to light activity.

Nevertheless, there was not enough evidence to say if engaging in more vigorous-intensity exercise is healthier.

Consequently, this study looked into the idea if doing more vigorous-intensity activity reduces mortality risk.

For a week the participants wore an activity tracker on their wrist so the intensity of their movement and its duration was recorded.

Then the research team calculated the energy used during body movement, which is known as physical activity energy expenditure (PAEE).

They also calculated the percentage of vigorous-intensity activity from the total volume of activity.

They found that using more energy of any type of activity resulted in a lower death risk over the three year follow-up.

For example, during the follow-up period, participants with a PAEE of 30 kJ per kg per day had a 50 percent lower chance of dying than those who had a PAEE of 15 kJ per kg per day.

The moderate intensity exercise in this case was 10 percent of the total volume.

This 10 percent is equal to an hour strolling plus walking briskly for 35 minutes.

Dr Tessa Strain, the study’s first author, said:

“Our results show that doing more activity of any intensity is beneficial, but that expending those calories in more intense activity is better still.

By gradually building up the intensity of physical activity we do each day we can improve our future health.”

Dr Søren Brage, study co-author, said:

“Our research shows how the use of wearable devices capable of measuring physical activity in large cohorts can help disentangle the roles of volume and intensity of activity in influencing future health.

The availability of data from nearly 100,000 participants in UK Biobank, backed up by a series of validation studies, allowed us to compare the impact of activity intensity in groups with similar overall volumes of physical activity, and demonstrate that more intense physical activity has health benefits beyond just contributing to total activity volume.

Our results also show that activity volumes accumulated almost exclusively through light activity could still halve the mortality risk.

Taken together, this means that there are several different pathways to maintain good health and people can choose the path that works best for them.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Medicine (Strain et al., 2020).

This type of workout is tied to a longer life expectancy and lower risk of death from any cause.

Any physical activity that makes you sweat and leaves you out of breath increases life expectancy considerably, research shows.

People who engage in some form of intensity exercise like competitive tennis, jogging, or aerobics live longer than those who take on moderate activities such as social tennis, household chores, or gentle swimming.

This finding is from a large Australian study that followed 204,542 middle-aged and older people over six years.

They suggest that higher levels of vigorous activity have a much better effect than moderate activity on human health.

Their results show that the risk of early death was 13 percent lower in people who undertook high-intensity exercise compared to those who carried out only moderate exercise.

Dr Klaus Gebel, the study’s first author, said:

“The benefits of vigorous activity applied to men and women of all ages, and were independent of the total amount of time spent being active.

The results indicate that whether or not you are obese, and whether or not you have heart disease or diabetes, if you can manage some vigorous activity it could offer significant benefits for longevity.”

The World Health Organization and health authorities in US, Australia, and UK currently advise adult population to do at least 75 minutes of vigorous activity or 150 minutes of moderate activity weekly.

The authors of this study suggest that public health and clinical guidelines should highly recommend vigorous-intensity exercises to improve people’s life expectancy.

Participants in this study were divided into two groups: those who exercised moderately and those doing at least 30 percent of their workout at a high intensity.

Those doing a little vigorous activity had a 9 percent lower risk of death rate compared to those who did no high-intensity exercise.

Those with did more than 30 per cent high-intensity exercise showed a 13 percent lower death rate.

Dr Gebel said:

“Our research indicates that even small amounts of vigorous activity could help reduce your risk of early death.

Previous studies indicate that interval training, with short bursts of vigorous effort, is often manageable for older people, including those who are overweight or obese.”

The study was published in JAMA Internal Medicine (Gebel et al., 2015).

Women who can do this live longer and have a lower risk of dying from heart disease, cancer, and other causes.

Women who can do high-intensity exercise have a longer life and much lower risk of death from any cause, including cancer and heart disease.

For the study, researchers ran a stress echocardiography test on 4,714 women while they were exercising on a treadmill.

Echocardiography stress tests are a method that shows how well your blood vessels and heart are working.

The study asked subjects to walk or run on a treadmill while increasing the intensity little by little until they felt exhausted.

A rating system was used so for the highest levels of fitness the score was 10 metabolic equivalents (METs).

This is equivalent to going up three flights very fast without a break.

Women who scored 10 METs would have good exercise capacity but those who score below that would have poor exercise capacity.

The results showed that women with poor exercise capacity had four times the risk of dying from heart disease than those with good exercise capacity.

The number of cancer deaths in women with poor exercise capacity was twice as high.

Moreover, the number of deaths from other causes in this group was four times bigger than those with good exercise capacity.

Dr Jesús Peteiro, the study’s first author, said:

“Exercise as much as you can.

Fitness protects against death from any cause.

Good exercise capacity predicted lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other causes.”

Also during the exercise test, the researchers monitored the left ventricular chamber of the heart.

They saw that participants with poor heart function throughout exercise were more likely to die form cardiovascular disease.

Dr Peteiro said:

“Looking at both examinations together, women whose heart works normally during exercise are unlikely to have a cardiovascular event.

But if their exercise capacity is poor, they are still at risk of death from cancer or other causes.

The best situation is to have normal heart performance during exercise and good exercise capacity.”

The study was presented at EuroEcho 2019, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).

A lifetime of this habit can slow down biological aging for many years.

Walking pace could directly affect the biological aging process, research finds.

An analysis of data from 405,981 UK adults found a connection between walking pace and a biological age marker called leucocyte telomere length (LTL).

Everyday brisk walking for 10 minutes may seem tiny, but the effect is not, as it has been shown to increase longevity.

Moreover, a lifetime of this habit can slow down biological aging for many years.

Previous research suggests that fast walkers have greater physical fitness, are less likely to develop cardiovascular disease, and have up to 20 years higher life expectancy than slow walkers.

To see whether these claims are true, the current study examined the difference in LTL between slow and fast walkers and found that brisk walking could lead to a biological age 16 years younger.

Telomeres are the caps on the ends of chromosomes (DNA molecules) protecting them from damage.

Telomeres become shorter with each cell division.

When telomeres reach the point that they can’t get any shorter, the cell cannot divide and it dies.

Telomere length is often measured in white blood cells (leucocytes).

Measuring telomere length is an effective method to study its shortening in relation to age-related diseases, cancer and heart disease.

Undoubtedly walking has social, mental, and physical health benefits, but the effect of walking pace on human life expectancy with regards to LTL has not been studied thoroughly before.

Dr Paddy Dempsey, the study’s first author, said:

“Previous research on associations between walking pace, physical activity and telomere length has been limited by inconsistent findings and a lack of high-quality data.

This research uses genetic data to provide stronger evidence for a causal link between faster walking pace and longer telomere length.

Data from wrist-worn wearable activity tracking devices used to measure habitual physical activity also supported a stronger role of habitual activity intensity (e.g. faster walking) in relation to telomere length.

This suggests measures such as a habitually slower walking speed are a simple way of identifying people at greater risk of chronic disease or unhealthy ageing, and that activity intensity may play an important role in optimising interventions.

For example, in addition to increasing overall walking, those who are able could aim to increase the number of steps completed in a given time (e.g. by walking faster to the bus stop).”

The study was published in the journal Communications Biology (Dempsey et al., 2022).