Many things help you live a long and strong life.
Some parts, like our genes and if we are a boy or a girl, can’t be changed. But, we can change a lot of how we live. We can eat well, move a lot, keep stress low, not smoke and get good sleep.
A fresh study from Peoples at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, which is still being checked, shows that even though moving a lot is good for living longer, taking up other good habits may help even more.
Living Long: Exercise Might Not Be the Only Key
Ms. Anna Kankaanpää, who works on projects at the Gerontology Research Center in the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, and who led the study, told Medical News Today why she looked into how free-time exercise and the risk of dying are linked. She said that an earlier study at the University of Jyväskylä hinted that genes might change this link.
“This finding is different from what a study of Swedish twins found, which showed the link was not tied to genes,” Kankaanpää added. “I wanted to find out why these results did not match.”
The scientists also pointed out that while past work has linked exercise to lower risks of dying from any cause and from heart disease, some studies have questioned this. For instance, a study from December 2021 showed that working out did not cut the overall death rate or heart disease cases in grown-ups or those with long-term health issues.
This means that more than just exercise might play a part in living longer.
Active Lifestyles and Lower Mortality Risk
To do their study, the researchers looked at info from more than 11,000 adult twins in the Finnish Twin Cohort. How much each person moved was checked with surveys done in 1975, 1981, and 1990. From what they said, each was put into one of four groups: not active, somewhat active, active, and very active. How long these folks lived was followed until 2020, which is a span of 45 years.
At the end of the study, the researchers saw that about 40% of people who did not move much had died by the 2020 check-up. This was the top death rate out of all four groups.
On the other hand, those who were active had a 15% to 23% lower chance of dying from any cause when put next to the group that was not active. “I wasn’t shocked by these results, as many other studies have also shown this link,” said Kankaanpää.
How Do Other Ways of Living Change Mortality Risk?
The study team looked at more ways of living, like body size (BMI), health overall, alcohol use, and smoking habits. When they added these things, the death risk for those who sit a lot fell a lot, to no more than 7%. The research also showed that people who sit a lot or move a lot age faster by their body’s clock than those who are somewhat active or active.
This all means that while moving often does help lower death risk over time, this tie is changed by other health parts. Moving often might not just cut death risk by itself; it might also show a full life of good health habits, all adding up to living longer.
“It may be good to check if these results work for some types of death, like heart issues,” said Kankaanpää, talking about what research could look at next. “I want to know why people who move a lot seem to age faster in their bodies.”
One Healthy Habit Cannot Compensate for Unhealthy Choices
Dr. David Cutler, a family medicine expert at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA, looked over the study and agreed with what it found. He said that the results go with the idea that being active is usually part of living healthier overall, not just that working out cuts death risk.
“This fits with what I see, where many folks work out to get healthy but think it can make up for bad habits, which it can’t,” Dr. Cutler noted. “The study backs up the idea of ‘compensatory belief.'”
Dr. Cutler said that working out does not make up for bad life choices such as eating junk, smoking, drinking too much, or not taking care of illnesses like high blood pressure, too much bad fat, and sugar problems.
“Better health worldwide has come from five main things: keeping a good weight, taking care of blood pressure, staying away from smoking, keeping sugar problems in check, and dealing with too much bad fat,” he noted. “While working out often can make these good effects stronger, it can’t fix the harm from not following these known health tips.”
Some Exercise Is Better Than None for a Longer, Healthier Life
In a chat with Medical News Today, Dr. Cheng-Han Chen, a top heart doctor and leader of the Heart Program at MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute in Laguna Hills, CA, talked about this study.
Dr. Chen stressed how the results show that even a little bit of moving helps to lower death rates more than doing nothing. “Doing Some Exercise is better than doing nothing at all,” he said.
He also said that other new findings back this idea, pointing to studies on how much we walk each day. “These studies find that the good things from walking do not grow much after about 7,000 to 8,000 steps each day,” Dr. Chen said. “Walking 20,000 steps doesn’t really add more good points than walking 7,000 steps.”
“This fits with other work that shows even a bit of exercise is good,” he said. “The main point to get is that you don’t need a lot of exercise to see health gains.” Yet, Dr. Chen noted a limit of the study: it took place with a group that was quite the same in Finland. “The findings might not all work for groups in the United States, which are more mixed,” he said. “It would be good to look at this info with a more varied group of people.”
The Essence
Study after study shows that exercise helps us live longer and stay well. Being active often lowers the chance of dying early and the risk of heart problems. But moving your body isn’t the only thing that keeps us alive for a long time. Exercise also shows we may live a healthy life in other ways, like eating well, not smoking, handling stress, and taking care of things like being too heavy or having high blood pressure.
Research tells us that even light exercise is very good for us, but doing too much might not add extra help. The main point is that any exercise is better than none. Make moving part of your day-to-day life—don’t think it will fix all bad choices—but it will help you live a longer, better life.
