Not exercising enough could pose a major risk to your health, new data suggests. According to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open, not getting enough exercise could pose a greater risk to your health than heart disease, diabetes, and smoking.
Between 1991 and 2014, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic studied 122,007 participants under treadmill testing and recorded their mortality rates.
The study found that there was a clear connection between longer, healthier lives and high levels of exercise.
“Cardiorespiratory fitness is inversely associated with long-term mortality with no observed upper limit of benefit,” said the authors of the study. “Extremely high aerobic fitness was associated with the greatest survival and was associated with benefit in older patients and those with hypertension.”
Although it’s known that an active lifestyle is the key to a healthy life, the study concludes that sedentary behavior can have a major impact on your mortality rate.
The study’s co-author Dr. Wael Jaber said the results of the study were surprising.
“Being unfit on a treadmill or in an exercise stress test has a worse prognosis, as far as death, than being hypertensive, being diabetic or being a current smoker,” said Jaber. “We’ve never seen something as pronounced as this and as objective as this.”
Researchers also studied the risk of overactivity to determine if those who receive a greater amount of exercise are at higher risk for death. The results found that “ultra-exercisers” don’t face a higher risk of death, but that the more a person exercises the lower their mortality rate.
Aerobic exercise was not only determined to have the best health benefits overall but it also had better health benefits for participants over the age of 70. Although it’s important for seniors to participate in physical activity to improve their own mortality rate, it’s also important to keep them mobile and healthy.
Seniors are more susceptible to chronic illness, which can lead them to live in expensive nursing homes later in life. The average cost of a nursing home in Long Island is $15,000 a month.
The results of the study also show that a strong heart and lungs are crucial to a healthy lifestyle rather than a lower weight. Weight is the biggest insecurity for Americans, but past studies have shown that being overweight doesn’t determine the state of your health.
You’re still benefiting from physical activity whether you lose weight during the activity or not. For some, the goal of exercise is to lose weight, but the overall goal for exercise ought to be to improve your cardiovascular and lung health to reduce your mortality rate.
In addition to physical activity, other methods of self-care can also help to reduce your mortality rate. For instance, more than 1.5 billion people live with chronic pain worldwide.
Regular massages can not only be used to reduce pain (92% of massage patients agree that massage therapy is effective in reducing pain), but massage therapy is also good for improving blood circulation and lowering blood pressure. That’s why massage therapy is often recommended for those with high blood pressure or sports injuries.
That said, regular physical activity and self-care are crucial to reducing your mortality rate and improving your odds of living a healthy lifestyle. It’s recommended to receive 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity every week.
