Run for Your Life.

A 21 year study has found that vigorous running activity in older people not only helps them live longer, but shows that they suffer fewer disabilities than healthy non-runners. The study was started in a time (1980s) when it was believed that vigorous activity would harm older people and that it would bring about "an epidemic of joint and bone injuries", and has proved distinctly otherwise. You can read about it by clicking here

Participants in this study were all aged 50 or more when the the study started ran an average of about 4 hours per week at the beginning of the study to around 76 minutes per week by the end of the study The runners have seen half the death rate and less disabilities than the healthy non runners.

With the benefit of my own experience, I believe it shows once again that regular, vigourous activity throughout our lives does have a dramatic and positive impact on our health, the keys here being regular and vigorous: not "extensive". Too much of a good thing can, of course, have a reverse effect and we need to remember that just because something is good for us, doesn't necessarily mean that more is better. And of course you don't have to run - any form of regular moderate to vigorous activity over your lifetime (not just up to your 30s and 40s) will help you live longer with less disability.

Here's the thing:
We are designed to move and if we stop moving, we begin to 'rust': our general health decreases; we have less general energy and mental alertness because we take in less oxygen; our muscles get weaker quicker; we start to suffer earlier from reduced stability and so, because it's harder, we move less, and less and less, until we stop. For good. Apparently, death is still one of the few things we can't avoid, but if it's up to me, I want to live well, rather than ill. Move it or Lose it, I say. :)

"Exercise is like the most potent drug. Exercise is by far the best thing you can do."
Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of women and heart disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City