Regular jogging helps extend youth

Regular jogging helps slow down the effects of aging, according to US researchers.

Most people know that physical activity at any age is related to maintaining and enhancing health. But what about their effectiveness with time?

A group of US researchers conducted a long-term study (20 years) in adults who regularly run.

Researcher Eliza Chakravarty and colleagues at Stanford University, California, sent an annual questionnaire to 538 members of a football club and 423 California testers.

All at the age of 50 or more in 1984 was the beginning of the study.

The data collected involves jogging and how often exercise, body mass index (BMI) and physical energy loss conditions (the ability to walk every day, wear clothes, wash, stand up from the chair, get things .) until 2005.

In total, 284 runners and 156 control people filled out all the questionnaires. Initially, activists ran an average of 4 hours a week, after 21 years of follow-up, this time was reduced to about 76 minutes per week.

The results obtained in 1984 showed that people in the jogging group looked younger, slender and less likely to smoke than those in the control group.

These controls are also in a state of losing physical ability more than those who practice and this happens in every follow-up period.

About 16 years later, this incapacity increased with age in both groups, but at a slightly lower level for regular activities.

On the other hand, the researchers did not realize that the rate of arthritis as well as the false knee joint was higher than in the runners.

After 19 years of follow-up, about 15% of people in the jogging group have died, while in the control group this rate is up to 34%.

Physical disabilities and survival also continued to differ between the two groups after 21 years of follow-up, when the study participants reached age 90.

So how to protect health at old age? The answer is by exercise.

For James Fries, one of the study authors, this demonstrated the Theory of disease incidence reduction: regular exercise that prolonged the years of life is not disabled and therefore qualitative. higher quality of life.

In fact, continuing to practice sports does not necessarily extend life, but this will limit the end of life in which we are no longer able to perform daily activities on our own.

In other words, long-term joggers are almost physically better, having a more positive survival period.

The risk of premature death for some diseases (cardiovascular, cancer, neurological, infectious, etc.) in these people is also less than twice that of those who do not regularly do physical activity.