Question of the Day: Fitness Pursuits and Longevity

I was at an event yesterday in the DFW metro where the question came up as to “what’s the very best fitness activity to promote longevity?”

Anytime someone throws out opinions about the very best anything related to individual health, physiology, and wellness, the little man holding the red flags in my head jumps up and starts waving like mad. Why? Because the very best anything (food, nutrition plan, exercise, etc) for a given individual depends of course on their specific health, wellness, fitness, metabolism and physiology, and even their beliefs and biases at the time.

That said, I shared a two-part answer to the question…

Physical Activity and Longevity in the Copenhagen City Heart Study

It just so happens that this week I came across this study in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings detailing the associations between various leisure-time physical activity pursuits and varying life expectancies in the study group.

The Copenhagen City study was a fairly robust one, following almost 9000 participants longitudinally over a span of up to 25 years for all-cause mortality.

The study was of course an observational one, meaning causality can’t be established, though in the analysis participants playing tennis gained 9.7 years of life expectancy compared to the sedentary group. Badminton aficionados gained 6.2 years, soccer players 4.7, cyclists 3.7, swimmers 3.4, with those pursuing “health club activities) following along at 1.5 years of life expectancy extension compared to sedentary folks.

The full study is behind a paywall and inaccessible for quick review; there are of course a number of questions raised by the conclusions drawn (diets, comorbidities, etc), including the authors’ inference that leisure-time sports with greater social interaction appear to be associated with greater longevity.

So should we all pick up tennis and badminton racquets after 40? Perhaps, though I’d argue there’s one fitness pursuit almost anyone can pursue at some level, and that probably offers the easiest to access longevity benefit for most of us…

Lace Up Those Walking Shoes

Count me among those prone to argue that walking, simple walking, something that most of us can readily incorporate into even a busy daily routine, may very well be “the best” fitness activity to promote longevity.

Back in July I looked at the debate of health benefits accrued from Walking vs. Jogging, and referenced a number of studies looking at health benefits from walking.

For example, even modest walking, done consistently, has been shown to invoke risk reductions for hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and hypercholesterolemia. Men in the 65-74 band experienced a reduction in all-cause mortality, increasing the more they walked. Even moderate walking was effective at improving glucose tolerance in a group at risk for T2DM. There are more links out to supporting data in the July post above, including several looking at injury rates in runners vs. walkers.

Bottom line, hacking longevity is a hot topic these days, and a fun one to ponder (now and then anyway). That said, unless one is willing to pick off the low-hanging fruit here – optimizing your diet, getting good sleep, managing stress, developing solid baseline fitness at least – jousting over the very best fitness pursuits via which to live long and prosper is probably barking up the wrong tree.

See you on the walking trail tomorrow…