Having seen a lot of family, friends, colleagues, etc. go through middle age to their senior years, it is very clear that those who are very active through middle age into their 60s and 70s do so much better than those who "slow down" and do not get any exercise. The kicker is that one thing that will put you in the grave as fast as cancer and heart disease is frailty. Frailty often sets in when people in their 70s and 80s have a fall and break a hip or hurt their back. They are so out of shape that they are incapable of recovering from the injury (and being out of shape is often the cause of the injury as they lack balance and coordination needed to avoid the fall). That then sets in motion a spiral of decline that cannot be stopped.
Agree a fall in old age sets in decline spiral, but I think frailty is more cause rather than an effect of falls. Frailty kicks in with muscle atrophy, which is correlated with lack of activity and balance and coordination skills. Frail inactive people, even ones that haven’t taken a fall, typically start walking with gingerly baby steps like an accident waiting to happen.
Both skinny active people and heavier sedentary people do better than frail inactive people.
To the OP's comment about correlation vs. causation, that is a good point.
All I can venture is that for those that are not fit enough to be leading an active lifestyle, maybe this might serve as a catalyst to address their issues to the extent that they become active.
In that regard, even if it (moving/active lifestyle) is just a correlation rather than a causation, it may nonetheless indicate a real need to get to that point in which they are capable of moving more, and do it.
I mean, it's pretty simple metric for almost anybody to to grasp - are they able to move for an hour or day, for example. That's a lot simpler than starting to see how they measure up against a bunch of other health or mobility measures.
This is a great point.
Many illnesses, however, are intractable. An acquaintance of mine is dying of ALS for example. She would clearly feed into the correlation side of this.
My father was never athletic. But in his late 40s, he got a gym membership and made a point of going 3-5 times a week to do very basic strength training. He used to live in Boston and made a point of walking up Comm Ave to the park every morning before work. He kept this up through his 60s and 70s and still does it in his 80s. He is 86 and never had any serious illnesses. He can still drive, travel and get around the house to do whatever chores need to be done.
I was skiing at Crested Butte and took the back country tour that they offer. The ski guide was an 82 year old woman who was once a pro ski racer and then life long ski instructor. She can still ski down anything on the mountain. She is on the mountain every day during the ski season and in the summer leads back country hiking groups.
Having seen a lot of family, friends, colleagues, etc. go through middle age to their senior years, it is very clear that those who are very active through middle age into their 60s and 70s do so much better than those who "slow down" and do not get any exercise. The kicker is that one thing that will put you in the grave as fast as cancer and heart disease is frailty. Frailty often sets in when people in their 70s and 80s have a fall and break a hip or hurt their back. They are so out of shape that they are incapable of recovering from the injury (and being out of shape is often the cause of the injury as they lack balance and coordination needed to avoid the fall). That then sets in motion a spiral of decline that cannot be stopped.
Your point about frailty is a great one. People become frail, and then they fall as you say. My MIL recently passed. She had started falling in the last year of her life, and we believe she sustained a head injury due to one of her falls. The resulted in dementia and a rapid decline ending in death. It was very sad and hard to watch. However, it is worth noting that she lived in an urban center and walked frequently. Her problem was lack of strength. Runners take note - move AND stay strong.
Newborns have the most longevity but the least movement; sedentary 20 year olds have more years to live than marathon-running 70 year olds. So, it is not true that how much and how vigorously you move are more important than how old you are. Also, a fair amount of this kind of claim would have to take into account that you already have to be in good shape to be able to move around a lot vigorously, so you're comparing a healthy pool to a pool that includes a bunch of people who cannot move around a lot. So, Hutch, be more careful in how you report these studies.
Did you even read the article? The study was over a group in the 50-80 age range that excludes the young as well as the very old. For that group, it’s quite plausible for the data to reveal exercise as a better predictor of remaining years than age.
No, I read his summary:
"Take a moment to let that sink in: how much and how vigorously you move are more important than how old you are as a predictor of how many years you’ve got left."
My father was never athletic. But in his late 40s, he got a gym membership and made a point of going 3-5 times a week to do very basic strength training. He used to live in Boston and made a point of walking up Comm Ave to the park every morning before work. He kept this up through his 60s and 70s and still does it in his 80s. He is 86 and never had any serious illnesses. He can still drive, travel and get around the house to do whatever chores need to be done.
I was skiing at Crested Butte and took the back country tour that they offer. The ski guide was an 82 year old woman who was once a pro ski racer and then life long ski instructor. She can still ski down anything on the mountain. She is on the mountain every day during the ski season and in the summer leads back country hiking groups.
Having seen a lot of family, friends, colleagues, etc. go through middle age to their senior years, it is very clear that those who are very active through middle age into their 60s and 70s do so much better than those who "slow down" and do not get any exercise. The kicker is that one thing that will put you in the grave as fast as cancer and heart disease is frailty. Frailty often sets in when people in their 70s and 80s have a fall and break a hip or hurt their back. They are so out of shape that they are incapable of recovering from the injury (and being out of shape is often the cause of the injury as they lack balance and coordination needed to avoid the fall). That then sets in motion a spiral of decline that cannot be stopped.
Your point about frailty is a great one. People become frail, and then they fall as you say. My MIL recently passed. She had started falling in the last year of her life, and we believe she sustained a head injury due to one of her falls. The resulted in dementia and a rapid decline ending in death. It was very sad and hard to watch. However, it is worth noting that she lived in an urban center and walked frequently. Her problem was lack of strength. Runners take note - move AND stay strong.
that is a great footnote, as well.
I found the Steve Magness advice to Masters age runners on running quite helpful, and I think I read it on his blog, but it said that masters should take the loss of muscle mass that comes with aging very seriously, so he suggested supplementing the running with some strength building workouts. If I remember correctly, I think he also suggested it may be advisable to reduce the long runs in order to stay strong and injury free.
I've got to say, I see a real lot of attention to this topic these days, and that is a good thing.
I did my best to take a deep dive. I found the rather humorous conclusion is the study focused more on HOW to get the best longevity predictions rather than the predictions themselves: namely, using an activity tracker vs. all the other standard measures such as BP, body mass, smoking, etc, etc…
To answer your question rojo, it looks like they tried to control many confounding variables that would limit movement, such as being in an institution and already having a mobility issue as well as numerous other variables that limit movement.
I am struggling to find why and how Alex decided to add the word “vigorous” to his quote “Take a moment to let that sink in: how much and how vigorously you move are more important than how old you are as a predictor of how many years you’ve got left”
Deep in the study they link to a related study on how higher VO2Max is related to longevity, BUT they do not address it in this study. Maybe I missed it, it is mind-numbingly hard to interpret these studies and, honestly, like so many things, you can bring your own confirmation bias into the interpretation. Feel free to correct me if I got it wrong.
Adding my own bias, I think folks can read and now watch a show called “Blue Zones” by Dan Buettner. It references the longest lived people on earth and how most of them move all day, but very few of them go to the gym or do any type of “workout”. In short, they are not runners.
Caveat to the “Blue Zones” story is a recent meta analysis of the data shows that record keeping is very poor in those very same blue zones and there is good reason to believe that quite a few of the folks are not as old as they claim. But they are still outstanding in their longevity even if they are not as old as they claim.
Here’s a link to the full study: Best read near bedtime.
It's only self selecting data in that the people who care enough about tracking this data in the first place, who care enough to read an article like this, are already going to be generally healthier than people who don't know or care about it at all because they're making a conscious effort to address it.
My Grandmother died at age 104; she was still sharp and relatively active till the last month of her life. She never really exercised, but she was always very active, walking, hiking, biking and swimming and I think that (and having a strong social network) contributed to her long life. My wife still remember when my granny, at age 99, was out shopping with her and sprinted 100 mt to catch a bus.
Does the header image of Wilt Chamberlain imply some hidden meaning? Kind of an odd choice for an outdoor publication.
Wilt Dhamberlain died of congestive heart failure when he was 'only' 63. He had a history of heart issues.
One of his organs reportedly received abnormally large amounts of activity (assisted by 20,000 partners) but it's unknown if that physical activity was of long duration and/or vigorous.
I think there is sufficient evidence at this point to support the idea that being physically active is a key living not only longer but better.
The two things a person can do to reduce all cause mortality: never smoke and stay active. Both are completely under your control. They also seem to have the biggest "bang for your buck".
I think there is sufficient evidence at this point to support the idea that being physically active is a key living not only longer but better.
The two things a person can do to reduce all cause mortality: never smoke and stay active. Both are completely under your control. They also seem to have the biggest "bang for your buck".
After cresting the big 7 - 0 this year, my wife and I have motto we heard and follow.
JAM = just always move! Got us to the top of Pikes Peak this year as age group winners so must be something to it.
A new study from biostatisticians at the University of Colorado, Johns Hopkins University, and several other institutions crunched data from the long-running National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), comparing the predictive power of 15 potential longevity markers. The winner—a better predictor than having diabetes or heart disease, receiving a cancer diagnosis, or even how old you are—was the amount of physical activity you perform in a typical day, as measured by a wrist tracker.... The message to remember is: move or die.... Take a moment to let that sink in: how much and how vigorously you move are more important than how old you are as a predictor of how many years you’ve got left.
Has anyone on here taken a deep look at this? Did they account for the fact that correlation isn't the same as causation? Maybe those who move the most are already the most healthy?
I studied exercise physiology in graduate school in the 90's Back then research showed life is typically extended by the total amount of exercise. So if you add up all the exercise you've ever done that's the amount of extension you get. After watching my parents at the end of their lives there is no guarantee how the end will go for any of us, even doing everything right. Living much past 80 is crap shoot.
I had run consistently for 25+ years and was then diagnosed with aggressive triple negative breast cancer at age 51 and then endometrial cancer at age 56 along with two skin cancers. Turns out I have genetic disorder called Lynch syndrome that increases all sorts of cancer types. Oh joy. And now at age 64 my coronary calcium score is zero. One thing going right.
No telling why I've survived this long but I'm ok with going sooner than later. I value quality of my life over the quantity, and it's already a lot more challenging at this age than I thought it would be.