I have been saying for a long time that next Monday I am going to run, but I am not explicit about the exact date. Now, reading some reports on human health, I have found that a man who reaches 40 and is obese will have seven years less of life and another one confirms that running extends life.
I am going to refer to the latter because it has been confirmed that people. Who want to live a long and healthy life may have to start running.
A published study shows that middle-aged members of a running club were half as likely to die over a 20-year period as people who did not run.
The scientists were quite clear in making their case by confirming that running reduced the risk, not only of heart disease. But cancer and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, according to scientists at Stanford University in California, USA.
“Nineteen years later, 15 percent of the runners had died compared with 24 percent of those in the control group,” wrote Eliza Chakravarty, M.D., and her collaborators in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Any type of active exercise is likely to lead to the desired results, according to James Fries, M.D., of Stanford, who worked on the study.
“Both common sense and benchmark science support the idea that there’s nothing magical about running per se,” said Fries, who added. ”It’s the regular physical activity that’s important.”
The team monitored 284 members of a national running club and 156 similar, healthy people as a control group. All were faculty staff and had similar social and economic backgrounds, and an age of 50 or older.
Beginning in 1984, each volunteer completed an annual survey on sports frequency, weight, and disability for eight activities: standing, dressing and grooming, hygiene, eating, walking, reaching, handgripping, and routine physical activities.
Most of the volunteers did some exercise, but the runners exercised up to 200 minutes a week, compared with 20 minutes for the non-runners.
Initially, the runners were leaner and less likely to smoke compared to the control group. And they exercised more throughout the study period overall.
“Over time, all groups reduced their running activity, but the runner group continued to accumulate more minutes per week of vigorous activity of all types,” the scientists wrote.
“Members of the runner groups had significantly lower levels of disability throughout the study,” they added.
The team also sought to answer whether starting to run at an older age would benefit and whether people who stopped exercising began to pay a price as they got older.
Most of the runners stopped running as septuagenarians, Fries said, but it was hard to find people who gave up exercise altogether. “Almost all of them did something else. They continued their vigorous exercise,” he said.
People who started exercising when they were older also improved their health, he said.
The study also showed that the excuse of injury risk is no excuse for not running: runners suffered fewer injuries of all types, including knee injuries.
Do we holguineros run?
Niuris and Rafael, two doctors, regularly visit the El Feliú sports area, where after warming up, they run for 40 minutes to an hour, and confess they feel better after exercising, and miss when they cannot do it because of work or rainy days.
José, an employee of the local tourist industry, always wears the most appropriate clothing, but prefers to run bare-chested so that the sweat does not stick to his shirt, and once or twice a week he also goes to this track, where he has made friends who are enemies of a sedentary lifestyle.
Others like the Argentinean priest Alberto run, almost daily, not so much to lose weight as to get oxygen to every cell of the body. To feel better and thus extend life with quality and better health.
After knowing what scientists argue about the need to run to live. It is better to look for time in our modern, but stressful life. To make valid that “healthy body in a healthy mind” and improve the quality of life.
Translated by Aliani Rojas Fernandez
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