Lower your risk of death and disease with one small change

If yesterday’s conversation didn’t convince you that even the simplest exercise can add years to your life, hopefully this new study will do the trick.

Because here’s the truth: You don’t need to go to the gym to move more and live longer. You just need to move.

And researchers at the latest annual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology presented new research demonstrating just how powerful even small changes can be…

Move more, get fit, and live longer   

This was the largest study of its kind to date. And it sends an important message to anyone who thinks they don’t have time for exercise.

Researchers recruited more than 315,000 adults between the ages of 18 and 74, all of whom had health screenings in Sweden between 1995 and 2015. Screenings included cycling challenges to assess for VO2 max. (That’s the maximum amount of oxygen your heart and lungs can supply your muscles with during exercise.)

During the study period, scientists also collected data from Swedish national registries on rates of death by any cause, as well as first-time heart-related events—including heart attack, stroke, and angina.

Ultimately, they found a clear link between activity levels and better health—with risk of death and cardiovascular events dropping by three percent, give or take, with each unit increase in VO2 max.

And this link benefited all age groups and all genders, which is the real news of the day. Because other studies have been too small to say whether exercise benefits everyone or not. (Though let’s be honest…this isn’t rocket science.)

It doesn’t matter where you’re starting

What made this study really noteworthy is that it showed, very conclusively, that increasing your fitness level improves your health—regardless of where you start.

In other words, no matter how fit you are, getting more fit will always benefit your heart.

And more importantly, any increase in fitness will lower your risk of death and disease. In fact, the less fit you are when you start, the more you stand to gain from added movement.

Results showed risk reductions as high as nine percent per every unit increase in VO2 max among the least fit subjects in the study. Which means that—once again—simple acts of daily exercise, such as taking the stairs or parking further away from the store, could keep you out of an early grave.

And if you pair more movement with the right diet—like I discussed in the October 2018 issue of my monthly Logical Health Alternatives newsletter (“This simple weight loss plan that can prevent, treat, and even REVERSE chronic disease”)—you can maximize your benefits even more, while eliminating your risk of (or reversing) obesity, diabetes, and cancer…to name just a few.

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So what are you waiting for? Get up. Get moving. Get healthy. The path to a longer life doesn’t get any straighter than that.

Source:

“Move more to live longer: Take the stairs, cycle to work, or exit the metro a station early and walk.” ScienceDaily, April 12, 2019. (sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190412085238.htm)