What’s the Best Kind of Exercise for Longer Life?

Exercise is good for your health. Everyone knows that. But what kind of exercise best translates those health benefits into a longer life?

Recently, researchers surprised exercise experts with the discovery is that, even if you can’t pull off the full recommended amount of exercise, getting less than the recommended amount is a lot better than getting none.

Now a new surprise adds to the evidence that strength training is way more valuable than experts previously thought.

The massive study included 80,306 adults from England or Scotland who were thirty or older at the start of the 14 year study. The study looked at how much exercise they got, the type of exercise they did and the effect it had on their risk of dying over the course of the study.

Strength training was really effective. Doing only strength training 2 or more times a week was associated with a 21% reduced risk of dying from any cause and a 34% reduced risk of dying from cancer. It did not seem to prevent death from cardiovascular disease.

Doing only moderately intense aerobic exercise for 150 minutes a week was associated with a 16% reduced risk of dying from any cause and a 22% reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. It did not seem to prevent death from cancer.

Doing both strength training and aerobic exercise reduced the risk of death from any cause by 29% and the risk of dying from cancer by 30%.

These surprising results suggest that strength training is at least as valuable as aerobic exercise for longevity. On their own, strength training is probably more valuable, and may be more valuable still to do both. The important point that this study makes is that, while more people do aerobic exercise than strength promoting exercise, it is important to  add weight lifting or bodyweight exercise like push ups or sit ups to your exercise program.

American Journal of Epidemiology 2017; doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwx345

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