Saturday 12 May 2012

Run for your life! Study finds joggers live an average of six years longer


Need a solid excuse to dust off your running shoes? Joggers have been found to live an average of six years longer than those who don't jog.
However, you’ll have to run for at least one hour a week for benefit, according to a new study in Denmark.
Researchers found that jogging was associated with a 44 per cent reduction in the relative risk of death for those over 35 years compared with deaths among those who did not run.
The same benefit applied to both men and women.
The 44 per cent reduction translates to an ‘age-adjusted survival benefit’ of 6.2 years in men and 5.6 years in women, according to Dr. Peter Schnohr, chief cardiologist from the Copenhagen City Heart study.
Furthermore, the jogger’s lives are not only longer but happier too as those who ran reported an overall sense of well-being, said Schnohr. 



'The results of our research allow us to definitively answer the question of whether jogging is good for your health,' Schnohr said in a statement.
'We can say with certainty that regular jogging increases longevity. The good news is that you don't actually need to do that much to reap the benefits,' he continued. 


Fighting fit: The study also found that joggers led happier lives
The study also found that the optimum benefit of jogging was for those who jogged at a slow-to-average pace for between an hour and two and a half hours spread over two or three weekly sessions.
The revelations are the latest to come out of the Copenhagen City Heart Study which began in 1976. At the beginning of the programme the study’s 19,329 participants’ age ranged from 20 to 79.
The 1,878 participants in the most recent study were asked how often and how quickly they ran.
Researchers then compared deaths among the joggers among the non-joggers in the main study pool of almost 20,000.
Over 35 years, 122 joggers died compared with 10,158 non-joggers.