60MIN RUN ADDS 7HRS TO YOUR LIFE
Jogging cuts early death by 40%
JOGGING may be the single most effective exercise to increase life expectancy, research shows.
Just five minutes of daily running can bring benefits – with every 60 minutes adding seven hours to your life.
The risk of premature death dropped by almost 40 per cent in joggers, whatever someone’s pace or mileage.
Even as little as five minutes of daily running was associated with prolonged lifespans.
This figure held true even if the runner smoked, drank and had health problems such as hypertension and obesity.
Researchers estimated a typical jogger would spend less than six months running over 40 years but could live an extra 3.2 years.
The findings come from Iowa State University, who analysed a 2014 study of 55,000 men and women aged between 18 and 100.
Lead author Duck-chul Lee said: “Runners showed bigger significant reductions in mortality than people who are active in other types of exercise.”
Lee, who jogs twice a week, said that running seemed to increase life expectancy by just over three years.
Walking, cycling and other such activities dropped the risk of premature death by only 12 per cent.
The study, published in the journal Progress in Cardiovascular Disease, found that if every nonrunner from the review took up jogging, there would have been 16 per cent fewer deaths and 25 per cent fewer fatal heart attacks.
The researchers calculated that, hour for hour, running returns more time to people’s lives than it consumes, giving a net gain of 2.8 years.