Move around and shake those bits and you'll live longer!

Jul 12 2006

When you are getting long in the tooth and those creaking joints are beginning to discourage any form of exercise, just keep busy because researchers say that just about any form of effort which involves moving around is better than none.

Previous studies have shown that older adults who report low physical activity levels are at a higher risk of death compared with those who report moderate or high levels of activity.

The findings as a rule have been based on questionnaires centered on physical activity levels, which are often not accurately recalled and often exclude many types of daily activity.

Todd Manini of the U.S. National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Maryland says elderly people who load the dishwasher, climb stairs or just keep moving are bound to live longer than their sedentary counterparts.

Manini says the message is that any movement is better than no movement and this can come from usual daily activities.

In order to determine the link between free-living activity energy expenditure with death from all causes a study of of 302 high-functioning, community-dwelling older adults aged 70-82 years was carried out.

The study found that those who engaged in more physical activity, not necessarily formal exercise, were much less likely to die than those who did not move as much.

The study found that among the one-third of study participants who expended the most energy, the risk of death over the six-year study period was 12 percent, compared to nearly 25 percent among the one-third who were least active.

Why moving around might lessen the risk of dying is unclear from this study but Manini says any exercise can help ward off ailments from heart disease to cancer.

For the study rather than take the participants word about their activities, the subjects were given specially formulated water to drink that allowed researchers to measure levels of carbon dioxide emitted in their urine as carbon dioxide is released during physical activity.

The people in the highest activity group were found to be more likely to work for pay, rather than occasionally doing voluntary work and also climbed two or more flights of stairs per day.

Manini and his team say simply expending energy through any activity may influence survival in older adults and any efforts to increase or maintain free-living activity energy expenditure is likely to improve the health of older adults.

The study was published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.