Add Years to Your Life
Want to add up to a year and a half to your life? Easy. Just get a moderate amount of exercise: Walk for 30 minutes, five times per week. Or add up to three and a half years by kicking it up a notch and running for 30 minutes, five times per week.
We all have heard time and again how exercising lowers risk of disease, improves quality of life and helps battle the bulge. Now we know, in concrete terms, that regular exercise increases lifespan, according to a study published this month in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Five thousand middle-aged and elderly Americans (men and women) were included in the study, and researchers found that those who had moderate to high levels of activity lived longer than inactive folks, mainly because they put off developing heart disease — the nation’s leading killer.