The Stanford University School of Medicine has released the results of a long-term study that explores how a lifetime of running affects the aging process. The multitude of benefits derived from running have surprised even the research team.

In 1984, James Fries, MD, and his team of research colleagues enlisted 538 runners, all older than 50, and a similar group of nonrunners. Each year since then, the study participants have completed questionnaires about their personal lives, including their ability to groom, dress, and walk themselves as well as to their ease in getting up from a chair and gripping various objects. Their running patterns have been documented through the years as well.

When the study began, the runners averaged about four hours of run time each week. Twenty-one years into the study, run time has diminished to only 76 minutes per average week but the runners were still reaping the benefits of their active lifestyle nonetheless.

After 19 years of study, only 15% of the runners had died, from any cause, compared to 34% of the group of nonrunners. As was expected, the rate of death due to cardiovascular disease was much lower in the group of runners but the running group also had fewer deaths attributed to cancer, infection, and neurological disease, among others.

By the 21st year of the study, participants in both the running and nonrunning groups had started bearing signs of advanced age. They are now all in their 70s and 80s. What has proven to be quite remarkable is that the age of decline is dramatically later in the runners than in the nonrunners.

The onset of initial disability occurred 16 years later, on average, in the group of runners than in the group not running. Even more surprising is that, as age advances, the gap between the health of the runners versus the health of the nonrunners widens, in effect compressing the ill effects of old age into the shortest amount of time possible.

Indeed, it was Fries' theory of "compression of morbidity" that led to the study in the 1980s. At that time, critics of the new running craze said the exercise would lead to injuries of the knee and other joints that would cause osteoporosis and other crippling disabilities as age advanced.

Fries' thoughts were that a lifetime of regular exercise, such as running, would extend the runner's life while enhancing vitality and improving its quality at the same time. His extensive study has proven his hypothesis correct.

Fries is emeritus professor of medicine at Stanford's medical school and is the senior author of the paper describing his study of running. The Archives of Internal Medicine carries the full details in its August 11 issue.

The National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases awarded grants for the Fries study.

Source: Stanford School of Medicine

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