(no subject)
washingtonpost.com
To Your Enduring Health: Do Chores, Live Longer
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Putterers and fidgeters, take heart! You have just as much to gain
as power walkers and iron pumpers.
A new study of healthy older people found that the more active a
person is, the longer he or she is likely to live. That alone is
not terribly surprising. What's new is that it apparently doesn't
matter what form the activity takes.
It doesn't have to be 20 minutes a day of aerobic exercise -- or
even be exercise. It can be household chores, yardwork, child
care, volunteer activities on one's feet -- anything that expends
energy.
Most studies of the relationship between health and physical
activity have hinged on people's reports of what they do each day
-- data that can be notoriously inaccurate. Researchers at the
University of Pittsburgh and the University of Tennessee at
Memphis took a different tack. They used an objective measure of
activity not subject to "recall bias."
They gave 302 adults, whose average age was 75, a dose of water
made of heavier-than-normal isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen, which
was absorbed into their tissues and then slowly released.
The oxygen left the body as carbon dioxide, which is produced with
activity. The researchers returned two weeks later and measured
the amount of labeled oxygen in each person. The less there was,
the more active the person had been.
The researchers followed the subjects for six years. Over that
period, 12 percent of people in the one-third of the group who
were most active subjects died. In the one-third with midrange
activity, 18 percent died. In the least active third, 25 percent
died.
The benefit can be from "usual daily activities that expend energy
and not necessarily from volitional exercise," wrote the leader of
the experiment, Todd M. Manini of the National Institute on Aging
in Bethesda.
But that's not the only good news. This study, which is to appear
today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests
that physical activity has an even bigger effect on health in old
age than was previously thought.
-- David Brown
To Your Enduring Health: Do Chores, Live Longer
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Putterers and fidgeters, take heart! You have just as much to gain
as power walkers and iron pumpers.
A new study of healthy older people found that the more active a
person is, the longer he or she is likely to live. That alone is
not terribly surprising. What's new is that it apparently doesn't
matter what form the activity takes.
It doesn't have to be 20 minutes a day of aerobic exercise -- or
even be exercise. It can be household chores, yardwork, child
care, volunteer activities on one's feet -- anything that expends
energy.
Most studies of the relationship between health and physical
activity have hinged on people's reports of what they do each day
-- data that can be notoriously inaccurate. Researchers at the
University of Pittsburgh and the University of Tennessee at
Memphis took a different tack. They used an objective measure of
activity not subject to "recall bias."
They gave 302 adults, whose average age was 75, a dose of water
made of heavier-than-normal isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen, which
was absorbed into their tissues and then slowly released.
The oxygen left the body as carbon dioxide, which is produced with
activity. The researchers returned two weeks later and measured
the amount of labeled oxygen in each person. The less there was,
the more active the person had been.
The researchers followed the subjects for six years. Over that
period, 12 percent of people in the one-third of the group who
were most active subjects died. In the one-third with midrange
activity, 18 percent died. In the least active third, 25 percent
died.
The benefit can be from "usual daily activities that expend energy
and not necessarily from volitional exercise," wrote the leader of
the experiment, Todd M. Manini of the National Institute on Aging
in Bethesda.
But that's not the only good news. This study, which is to appear
today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests
that physical activity has an even bigger effect on health in old
age than was previously thought.
-- David Brown