Get Moving! Any Sports Can Lower Seniors' Odds of Early Death

THURSDAY, Aug. 25, 2022

Here's a caller medicine for seniors who privation to unrecorded longer and little their likelihood of dying from cancer oregon heart disease: Lace up your running shoes oregon drawback your tennis racket.

A caller U.S. National Cancer Institute survey recovered older folks who played racquet sports lowered their hazard of decease by 16% implicit a 12-year follow-up. Running chopped the hazard by 15%.

Daily walking, jogging, swimming laps and playing tennis are immoderate of the sports researchers looked at, but, they said, immoderate mean carnal enactment done play volition bash the trick.

"It's ne'er excessively precocious to start," said pb researcher Eleanor Watts, a postdoctoral fellow. "So if you're inactive and you're older, you tin inactive reap important rewards by expanding carnal activity."

Exercise increases longevity successful respective ways, she said. It reduces assemblage fat, lowers blood pressure and reduces inflammation successful the body. And determination whitethorn good beryllium different benefits that aboriginal probe volition uncover.

Reaping the benefits of exercise is lone a substance of starting, she stressed.

"Find a recreation enactment that you like," Watts said. "It doesn't person to beryllium intense. Even going for a locomotion for 20 minutes a time is truly apt to beryllium effective."

For the study, her squad collected information connected astir 273,000 men and women betwixt 59 and 82 years of property who were portion of a diet and wellness survey co-sponsored by AARP and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The information showed that radical who ran, biked, swam, did different aerobic exercises, played racquet sports, play oregon walked to enactment progressive had a 13% little hazard of dying during the survey period, compared with those who didn't exercise. The hazard simplification varied by sport.

The benignant of athletics besides was tied to the hazard of dying from circumstantial diseases. Playing racquet sports reduced the hazard of dying from heart disease by 27% and moving chopped the hazard of dying from cancer by 19%, the information showed.

The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans urge that adults get 2.5 to 5 hours of moderate-intensity aerobic carnal enactment each week, oregon 1.25 to 2.5 hours of vigorous activity.

Watts said doing much reduced the hazard of aboriginal decease adjacent more, but the gains were smaller. You scope a constituent of diminishing returns, she noted.

Even getting little enactment than the recommended magnitude has a benefit. Compared with folks who don't exercise astatine all, those who bash get successful immoderate carnal enactment whitethorn little their hazard of aboriginal decease by 5%, the researchers found.

Dr. Benjamin Hirsh, manager of preventive cardiology astatine the Sandra Atlas Bass Heart Hospital successful Manhasset, N.Y., reviewed the findings.

"This grounds has been shown galore times for patients with heart disease," helium said.

But this is 1 of the fewer studies to amusement the benefits of expanding enactment for some patients with heart disease and cancer, Hirsh said. The biggest obstacle is getting patients to alteration their manner and devour close and exercise, helium added.

"It is pursuing the basics of diet and greater enactment that substance tremendously," helium said. "The existent situation successful medicine is trying to get patients to alteration their behavior. It is 1 of the astir hard challenges for physicians, adjacent much than diagnosing and treating uncommon conditions."

The survey was published online Aug. 24 successful JAMA Network Open.