A Few Recent Research Results on Fitness, Exercise, and Age-Related Decline

It is no big secret that regular exercise and greater fitness leads to better health and a longer life expectancy, though it remains uncertain as to where the point of greatest benefit lies. What is the dose-response curve for exercise? How does it vary by circumstances and type of exercise? Given the glacial pace of demographic studies, I fully expect good answers to those questions, with robust data behind them, to arrive only decades from now, after the point at which the first rejuvenation therapies exist. What we know today about exercise and aging, gathered from large long-running studies of past decades, is but an outline of the full picture. Athletes at the top of their profession go on to live from a few years to a decade longer on average than the rest of the population, but the data doesn't tell us whether that is because of exercise and fitness, or because only more robust people tend to succeed at becoming professional athletes. At the other end of the scale, there is a few year difference in life expectancy and sizable health difference in the outcomes resulting from being sedentary versus undertaking regular moderate exercise. It is much more certain that this is an effect of the choice to work on fitness versus the case that more resilient people tending to exercise more frequently. When it comes to a high expectation of positive results for the future of your health, there really are only three options at the present time: regular moderate exercise, some for...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs