The importance of keeping fit at any age cannot be under-estimated. Whether you’re young or old, male or female, the benefits of regular exercise to your physical health and mental and emotional wellbeing are many. Underlining this is a new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine which claims that engaging in half an hour of physical activity 6 days a week is linked to a 40% lower risk of death among elderly men.

The research was carried out by the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences in Oslo, Norway, and examined data from 15,000 men born between 1923 and 1932 who were enrolled in the Oslo Study in 1972. At that time details regarding the men’s height, weight, cholesterol, blood pressure, smoking status and physical activity levels were recorded. The latter was categorized as sedentary (watching TV/reading); light (walking or cycling, including to and from work, for at least 4 hours a week); moderate (formal exercise, sporting activities or heavy gardening for at least 4 hours a week); and vigorous (hard training or competitive sports several times a week).

Thirty years later, 5,738 of the surviving participants repeated the health checks. Over the next 12 years they were monitored to see if there were any associations between the physical activity levels of the participants and risk of death. During this monitoring period, 2,154 of the remaining participants died.

The overall findings showed that men who regularly took part in moderate to physical activity lived an average of five years longer than participants who had earlier classified their down-time as sedentary.

While the data indicated that less than one hour per week of light physical activity was not associated with risk of death from any cause, it showed that more than one hour of physical activity per week was linked with a 32-56% decrease in risk. In addition, the men who engaged in vigorous physical activity for less than an hour per week had a reduced risk of 23-37% for death from any cause.

Overall, 30 minutes of light to vigorous physical activity, 6 days a week, was linked to a 40% reduction in risk of death from any cause.

The researchers do acknowledge that the observational study does not prove cause and effect, and that only the healthiest participants from the first part of the study participated in the second round, which may have influenced why overall risk appeared low. Nonetheless, they also point out the extreme difference between the active and the sedentary groups and state that this alone is enough to highlight how a simple change like half an hour of physical exercise a day can help elderly men stay healthy and fit for many more years in their old age.

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