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Home » Fitness » Midlife fitness delays chronic disease

Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 5:18pm

CNN We all know that exercise and fitness are key components to healthy living. Now new research is adding further proof that it will increase your quality of life.

The study, published in this week's Archive of Internal Medicine, finds that being fit in the middle of your life not only delays the onset of chronic diseases later in life, but also shortens the duration of disease.

"We've known for years that exercise is good for you, but what's not been clear is to what extent the health benefits persist across a lifespan," said study author Dr. Jarrett Berry, associate professor of medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Berry and his co-authors surveyed 18,670 patients, from the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study, one of the largest patient databases in the world looking at fitness indicators. The Cooper Center began collecting patient information in 1970, and now has more than 100,000 patients enrolled in its database.

The study selected patients who were 65 years or older as of January 1, 1999, and measured their fitness level by having them walk on a treadmill. The patients were then organized by sex, age, and divided into five different fitness levels ranging from very low to very high.

For the next 25 years, study authors followed up on their fitness levels and recorded any chronic disease.

"It's not just heart disease and just cancer -- it's all kinds of chronic diseases, " said Berry.

Patients' Medicare records were assessed for the following conditions: Congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, stroke, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer's, and colon or lung cancer.

When looking at men, the incidences of chronic disease was reduced by 45% between the group with the highest fitness levels, and those with the lowest. For women, the difference between the two groups was 43%.

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Midlife fitness delays chronic disease

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