on PinterestA recent study found that your midlife fitness can affect your life span and health span.
on PinterestA recent study found that your midlife fitness can affect your life span and health span. Image Credit: Emilija Manevska/Getty Images
- Recent research has shown that adults with higher levels of midlife cardiorespiratory fitness may live longer, healthier lives.
- The study found that people with higher fitness levels not only lived longer but also developed chronic conditions later than those with lower fitness levels.
- Experts tips to help improve your cardiorespiratory fitness.
Regular physical activity and fitness levels are important for overall health and well-being.
According to a recent study, your level of cardiorespiratory fitness in midlife can not only help determine how long you live, but also how many of those years you spend in good health.
Cardiorespiratory fitness refers to how well your heart and lungs supply oxygen during physical activity.
The study showed that adults with higher midlife cardiorespiratory fitness lived longer, developed fewer chronic diseases, and spent more years free from serious illness than those with lower fitness. The results were recently published in the JACC, the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology.
“People with higher fitness may also have had other health advantages, such as better diet, less smoking, or more consistent access to care,” said Robert Glatter, MD, attending physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, and assistant professor of emergency medicine at Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. Glatter wasn’t involved in the study.
“The findings are very much in line with decades of research showing that cardiorespiratory fitness is one of the strongest markers of long-term health,” Glatter told Healthline.
Higher midlife fitness prolongs life span by 3%
Life span refers to how long you live. Health span refers to how long you live free of any major chronic diseases.
The study results showed that cardiorespiratory fitness can not only affect life span but also health span.
It followed 24,576 adults, 25% of whom were females, from the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study (CCLS). The participants were healthy individuals ages 65 or younger. The researchers later tracked their health outcomes using Medicare data.
Participants’ fitness was measured before age 65 using a treadmill test. During the study, the researchers used Medicare data to identify major chronic diseases for each participant.
They defined major diseases using 11 chronic conditions:
- heart failure
- ischemic heart disease
- stroke
- chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
- chronic kidney disease (CKD)
- diabetes
- Alzheimer’s disease and dementia
- colorectal cancer
- lung cancer
- breast cancer (females)
- prostate cancer (males)
The results showed that males with higher fitness levels had a 2% longer health span, 9% fewer diseases, and a 3% longer life span than those with lower fitness levels. The results showed similar patterns among females.
“This study confirms our understanding of cardiorespiratory fitness as a marker of future health outcomes, and should encourage all of us to make physical activity a part of our daily lives,” Cheng-Han Chen, MD, board certified interventional cardiologist and medical director of the Structural Heart Program at MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center in Laguna Hills, CA, told Healthline. Chen wasn’t involved in the study.
Mary Greene,
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