A LONG time ago, Greek philosopher Hippocrates once said that “If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.”
In general, more physical activity corresponds to a long life expectancy.
However, inactivity kills more people than obesity.
University of Cambridge researchers in the UK found that about 676,000 deaths each year were due to inactivity compared with 337,000 deaths that were due to carrying too much weight. Sedentary people are more likely to become feeble, needing help with tasks like carrying groceries and cleaning, and eventually even bathing.
Without exercise, you increase your risk of a wide assortment of chronic illnesses like coronary heart disease, heart attack, diabetes, hip fracture, high blood pressure, obesity and overweight!
I-Min Lee, professor of Medicine at Harvard University Medical School in the USA and senior author of the study said that “We must not underestimate how important physical activity is for health. Even modest amounts of physical exercise can add years to our life.”
According to a study headed by the National Cancer Institute in the USA, people who engage in physical activity during their leisure time live as much as 4.5 years longer than their sedentary counterparts.
The more you exercise, the longer you are likely to live.
After accounting for other life-expectancy factors, researchers found that people who got the recommended 2.5 hours of moderate exercise per week or just 1.25 hours of vigorous exercise per week lived an average of 3.4 years longer than non-exercisers.
Those who got twice that amount of activity lived an average of 4.2 years longer than sedentary people.
Even a small amount of exercise is better than none at all.
Research indicates that overall, people who do physical activity regularly can reduce their risk of premature death by 20 to 30 per cent.
Everyone can benefit from physical activity regardless of age, sex or physical ability.
By being active, you will burn calories that you store from eating throughout the day.
The explanation is that physical activity floods your body tissues with oxygen and nutrients that give energy to your cardiovascular system and other body systems and enable them to work efficiently.
When the health of your brain, heart and lung improves, you will have plenty of energy to tackle daily chores.
What is physical activity?
It is any activity that you may do that helps to improve or maintain your physical fitness as well as your health in general.
It can include everyday activities like walking or cycling to school or work, gardening, work around the house or any active manual work that you may do; active recreational activities like dancing, play amongst children, walking or cycling for recreation.
It also involves sport, like exercise and fitness training at a gym or during an exercise class, swimming and competitive sports such as football, netball and so on.
Health experts strongly recommend that during the daytime, all age groups should increase the amount of time spent moving around instead of being sedentary.
Exercise is one of the most important things you can do because it adds years to your life and increases your life expectancy.
For example, one research study found that the average 65-year-old who is doing regular physical exercise can expect an additional 12.7 years of healthy life; meaning, he will live disability-free until age 77.7.
Highly active 65-years-olds, however, have an additional 5.7 years of healthy life expectancy. They will remain disability-free until age 83.4.
Another study found that increasing physical activity after age 50 can add years to one’s life.
In the study, individuals with and without cardiovascular disease were compared by the amount of physical activity they did.
Men who were moderately active added 1.3 years to their lives and those who were highly active added 3.7 years.
Women who were moderately active added 1.1 years and those were highly active added 3.2 years.
In addition, people who exercised more also lived more years free of cardiovascular disease. While moderate exercise increases life expectancy, highly active people more than doubled the benefits.
In another recent study, people who exercised 150 minutes per week lived an average of 3.4 to 4.5 years longer than those who didn’t exercise at all.
Interestingly, those who exercised half that amount lived 1.8 years longer than those who didn’t exercise at all.
The researchers pooled self-reported data on leisure time physical activities from nearly 650,000 individuals over the age of 40 years enrolled in one Swedish and five US prospective cohort studies, most of which were investigating associations between lifestyle factors and disease risk. They used these and other data to calculate the gain in life expectancy associated with specific levels of physical activity.
A physical activity level equivalent to brisk walking for up to 75 minutes per week was associated with a gain of 1.8 years in life expectancy relative to no leisure time activity.
Being active—having a physical activity level at or above the World Health Organisation (WHO) – recommended a minimum of 150 minutes of brisk walking per week—was associated with an overall gain of life expectancy of 3.4 to 4.5 years.
Gains in life expectancy were seen also for black individuals and former smokers, groups for whom relatively few data had been previously available.
The benefits of physical exercise to you are many.
For instance, physical activity boosts your energy levels; improves your general well-being; reduces fat; makes your muscle strong; and conditions your brain, heart and lungs.
Scientists have linked the benefits of physical exercise to brain health.
Research shows that physical activity reduces your anger; makes you sleep better; keeps you more mobile as you get older; prevents some types of dementia; helps people to quit smoking; improves cholesterol levels; and helps prevent obesity.
Furthermore, physical activity or exercise improves body performance and builds your overall strength and endurance; makes you look and act younger; improves your posture; increases growth hormone levels; makes you stronger; increases the level of your Oxygen intake; gives you strong ligaments, tendons, and joints; increases lung capacity; improves your recovery when sick; makes you more productive and efficient at work; makes you happier; increases your self-esteem and self-confidence; and makes you a positive role model for your family and friends.
Above all, physical activity improves the health and soundness of your own mind and razor-sharpens your thinking and memory.
It encourages your brain to work at optimum capacity by causing your nerve cells to multiply, strengthening their interconnections and protecting them from damage.
Physical exercise helps you to build a brain that not only resists shrinkage but also increases thinking.
For more than a decade, neuroscientists and physiologists have been gathering evidence of the beneficial relationship between exercise and brainpower.
But the newest findings make it clear that this isn’t just a relationship; it is the relationship! Using sophisticated technologies to examine the workings of individual neurons and the makeup of brain matter itself scientists have discovered that exercise appears to build a brain that resists physical shrinkage and enhance cognitive flexibility.
Neuroscience has found that exercise increases one’s thinking because it promotes the brain’s physical growth and regeneration just as it does to body muscles.
The brain like all muscles and organs is a tissue and its function declines with underuse and age. Beginning in our late 20s most of us will lose about 1 percent annually of the volume of the hippocampus a key portion of the brain related to memory and certain types of learning.
When a group of 120 older men and women were assigned to walking or stretching programs for a major 2011 study the walkers wound up with larger hippocampus after a year.
In order to add years to your life and live longer adopt regular physical exercise as your new chosen lifestyle.
The author is a motivational mentor and consultant in positive mind-set change. Email: positivemindpower1511@yahoo.com/Facebook: lawrencemukuka.