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Everyone knows athletes who died tragically young and sedentary people who survived to old age. It is understandable why many people are heedless or skeptical of the sorts of statistics I just cited. These and other such studies lend credence to the saying that “ Men do not quit playing because they grow old they grow old because they quit playing.” Among both women and men, those who were more fit were about half as likely to suffer from chronic disease, and if they got sick did so at an older age. Because there is more to health than not being dead, Cooper Center researchers also tracked over the decades more than 18,000 healthy middle-aged individuals to see who got chronic health conditions such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Further, a subsample of those who were initially out of shape but started to exercise and increased their fitness halved their age-adjusted mortality rate compared to those who remained inactive and unfit. The more physically active women died at about one-third the rate of those who were unfit, and the fitter men had mortality rates about one-third to one-fourth lower than those who were least fit. One of their analyses tracked more than 10,000 men and 3,000 women older than 35 years to test if people who exercised and were physically fit lived longer and healthier lives. One of the most venerable long-term studies on how exercise affects aging is the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study in Dallas, Texas, started in 1970 by the man who coined the term “aerobics,” Dr. That sweat, moreover, needs to keep flowing as we age. I doubt anyone was astounded when Hippocrates wrote 2,500 years ago that “Eating alone will not make a man well he must also take exercise.”Ī mountain of evidence suggests that the Fountain of Youth runs with sweat. Just about everyone knows what countless studies confirm: regular physical activity slows the aging process and helps prolong life. For millennia, however, the most sensible advice has always included exercise. Not long ago, quacks would have tried to lure you to consume tobacco, mercury, or ground-up dog’s testicles to postpone your eternal rest today’s peddlers of immortality hawk human growth hormone, melatonin, testosterone, mega-doses of vitamins, or alkaline food. So for centuries people have sought ways to slow aging and defer death. Lieberman, who brings an evolutionary and anthropological perspective to unpacking the paradox that humans are adapted to run ( “Head to Toe,” January-February 2011, page 25), but have evolved to conserve energy, not expend it ( “Born to Rest,” September-October 2016, page 9). In this feature, excerpted and adapted from chapter 10 of his new book Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding (Pantheon Books), he integrates diverse lines of evidence to explain what happens to the body during physical activity-and why it is healthy.Įveryone wants to live long, but no one wants to get old. Several other articles have covered the research of Lerner professor of biological sciences Daniel E. Harvard Magazine has explored exercise from its epidemiological impacts and its basic biology at the level of mitochondria, to its potent anti-inflammatory effects. Editors’ note: Love it or hate it, exercise is a vital component of health.
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