[acb-diabetics] Jogging improves life

[Patricia LaFrance-Wolf]

For those jogging just an hour a week, there is a very real reward -- an
average of six more years of life, Danish researchers found.

According to Peter Schnohr, MD, chief cardiologist from the Copenhagen City
Heart Study, jogging was associated with a 44% reduction in the relative
risk of death over 35 years compared with deaths among non-joggers. And the
benefit was observed for both men and women.

Schnohr reported at the EuroPRevent 2012, that reduction translated into an
"age-adjusted survival benefit of 6.2 years in men and 5.6 years in women."
And that longer life is often a happier life, he said, since joggers
reported an overall sense of well-being.

Ian Graham, MD, of Dublin's Trinity College, who co-chaired the program
committee for the meeting added that, "This is definitely good news,
especially for those who have questioned whether simply jogging could be
beneficial."

"The results of our research allow us to definitively answer the question of
whether jogging is good for your health," Schnohr said in a prepared
statement. "We can say with certainty that regular jogging increases
longevity. The good news is that you don't actually need to do that much to
reap the benefits."

Moreover, even elderly people can add years to life by jogging. "A
70-year-old will benefit and I think the benefit may be even greater for
older people," Schnohr said in an interview.

In this analysis the optimum benefit was realized for those who jogged at a
slow-to-average pace between an hour and two and half hours done in two to
three sessions over the course of a week.

The key, Schnohr said, appears to be moderation, much like the benefit
observed with alcohol.

The jogging benefit is just the latest in a long list of studies from
Schnohr and colleagues -- more than 750 papers -- mined from the 19,329
participants in the Copenhagen City Heart Study, which is a prospective
cardiovascular population study begun in 1976.

When the study began, participants ranged in age from 20 to 79. All
participants underwent examinations over 2-year time frames beginning in
1976, 1981, 1991, and finally in 2001. In addition to assessments of
cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose, and BMI, patients were also
asked about smoking, alcohol consumption, education, and income.

The 1,878 participants in the jogging substudy (1,116 men) were also asked
about jogging frequency and pace.

The researchers tracked the data using a personal identification number in
the Danish Central Register. The authors compared deaths in joggers to
deaths among non-joggers from the main study cohort.

During 35 years of follow-up there were 122 deaths among joggers versus
10,158 deaths among non-joggers.

Practice Pearls

*	This substudy of the Copenhagen City Heart Study with more than 35
years follow-up found that jogging was associated with an increase of 6.2
years in lifespan for men and 5.6 years for women compared with non-joggers.

*	Note that the amount of jogging required to achieve this improved
survival was modest -- between 1 and 2.5 hours per week divided into two or
three sessions at a self-described slow to average pace. 

Schnohr P "Jogging -- healthy or hazard symposium: Assessing prognosis: a
glimpse of the future" EuroPRevent 2012. 


 

Related Articles

Caloric
<http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/articles/53-diabetes-news/12742-caloric-re
striction-linked-to-reduced-inflammation-markers>  Restriction Linked to
Reduced Inflammation Markers 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.acb.org/pipermail/acb-diabetics/attachments/20120513/010f3621/attachment.html>