By Kennedy Shelley
Running is the most basic exercise out there.
While there are ultra-marathon runners and those who get into high tech shoes and gear, the newest research shows that just short runs in blue jeans and sneakers can dramatically extend your life.
The study was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. They did an in-depth review of all the studies on running and health.
And there are some interesting studies that looked not only at reducing the risk of heart disease, but also cancers and Alzheimer’s disease.
When you look at all the studies you start to see that running seems to affect every system of the body which reduces the risk of “all cause mortality.”
All Cause Mortality is a medical research term that means “the person died.”
And while running was shown to extend life by preventing heart attacks, this study showed just how effective it was at keeping people from dying for any reason.
Looking at 14 studies that included data from over 200,000 participants some interesting trends started to become clear.
The studies ranged from 5.5 to 35 years so there is a great deal of data to analyze.
Any amount of running reduced all cause mortality during the studies by over 27%. And that finding applied to both men and women.
The reduction in death due to heart disease was 30%, but they also showed that cancer deaths were 23% lower.
And it didn’t seem to matter how much you ran. Just once a week for less than 50 minutes got the same benefit as the ultra-marathon people.
Running less than the current recommendations of 150 minutes per week of exercise is enough to extend your life.
Now, this study doesn’t show why this is happening, but that would be incredibly expensive and unlike drug companies who expect to make money on sales if they do a clinical trial.
No one makes money if you start getting off the couch and jog for 20 minutes a few times a week.
But the research does show that just a little slow running even once a week will provide more life extension protection than taking the most expensive statin drug which has been shown to only increase longevity by a few days when you analyze the data.
The British Medical Journal analyzed the data on statin drug use and the results were actually very disappointing…on average if you take a statin every day for 2-6 years you will only live 3.2 days longer than if you didn’t spend the money and time to take it.
Big Pharma is making billions of dollars a year to sell you those extra 3 days.
So, if Big Pharma could get $2 from you every time you took a jog, then you would see a big study done and they would talk about the 27% drop in all cause mortality in ads on TV.
But no one is talking about this because you can’t make money on it. So why pay when you can extend your life for free?
Here is a link to the British Medical Journal article if you need some extra motivation to just do a little running to extend your life:
