All the benefits of a walk after your forties
Published on 11/11/2012
The weekly Health supplement of the newspaper Repubblica reports on a study conducted by a team of scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute and published in the scientific journal Plos Medicine, according to which brisk walking for at least 450 minutes a week appears to add up to 4.5 extra years of life. And the benefit would shrink as the exercise is reduced accordingly: "For example, with 75 minutes of brisk walking a week, you gain 1.8 years in terms of life expectancy after age 40, compared with those who do nothing," explains I-Min Lee, epidemiologist and senior author of the study. And the benefit is obtained both in normal-weight people and in those who are overweight or obese.
The results show that physical activity has been associated with longer life across a range of disciplines. Practising a sport of moderate to vigorous intensity, comparable to up to 75 minutes of brisk walking a week, is associated with a 19% reduction in mortality risk compared with doing nothing.
Assuming a causal relationship, this level of physical activity confers an increase of 1.8 years of life after 40, compared with those who lead a sedentary life.
The best results were obtained among subjects who were both active and trim: the researchers observed an increase in life expectancy of 7.2 years compared with peers with a BMI of 35 or higher who were completely inactive.