Exercise (running) beneficial - study

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Washington Post

Health Section

By Schneider

Tuesday, August 26, 2008;

There is a branch of my wife's family convinced that running ruined our

cousin Frances (not ruined in the Southern gothic sense, of course, just

hobbled in the knees and back). Frances ran pretty regularly in her day, and

my mother-in-law warns me about it whenever she catches me in running shoes,

most recently last month on a trip to the beach.

Just in time (who doesn't love rebutting his mother-in-law?), researchers at

the Stanford University School of Medicine released the latest batch of

results from a long-term study comparing hundreds of older runners with

others of about the same age.

After my colleague Rob Stein posted an item on The Checkup health blog last

week, it seemed most of those who commented thought the study was consistent

with their experience: that regular running or other vigorous exercise was a

way to stave off the effects of aging, not a recipe for trouble.

Here's the gist of the research: Begun in 1984, the project assembled nearly

1,000 volunteers, about 538 runners and 423 " healthy controls. " They

averaged about 59 years old at the time. Death and dropouts have winnowed

the group, but about 440 have stayed involved.

They are now pushing into their 80s, and the research has found that the

running group is living longer, with a lower incidence not just of

cardiovascular disease, but of some forms of cancer as well. More to the

point here, they also are suffering fewer disabilities than the non-runners.

Using a standard questionnaire that assesses eight basic life activities,

such as standing, dressing and eating, the study found that non-runners, as

they aged, were much more likely to reach a point where they were unable to

do one or more of those tasks. F. Fries, who began the project to look

at the long-term effects of exercise on aging, calls it the " compression of

morbidity " : people who stay active as they grow older not only live longer

but also go through a shorter period of infirmity before they die.

Along with faring better on the study's broad measure of disability, the

runners seemed to have the same rates of osteoarthritis of the knee as the

non-runners, said Eliza F. Chakravarty, an assistant professor at the

Stanford medical school and one of the researchers. A rheumatologist, she

found that especially interesting as she reviewed the data.

" There's a concern that with all of the pounding, [running] would wind up

being detrimental to the knee, " she said. " But there was no significant

difference between the runners and the controls. "

Why is that the case?

Chakravarty said there are plenty of possibilities.

Running itself will increase muscle and ligament strength, while the

weight-bearing impact of the exercise will help bone density. The cartilage

in our joints, she said, is not fed directly by any set of dedicated blood

vessels or other system, and it needs the squeezing and motion of exercise

to be adequately lubricated and nourished.

There may, of course, have been a self-selecting aspect to the outcome:

Perhaps those still running in their 60s and 70s stuck with it because they

had remained injury-free.

The message is " it is never too late to adopt exercise, and we should not

discourage people from exercise just because of their age, " she said.

Although this study focused on runners, she said it is likely that biking,

swimming or any strenuous activity (which the researchers defined as keeping

the heart rate higher than 120 beats per minute) would have much the same

result.

Of course, common sense and good training rules still apply: Warm up, cool

down and stretch, and if you are just starting out on a running program, mix

some walk breaks in at first as your body adapts.

As some of the commenters noted in Rob's blog, injury often occurs when we

press beyond limits we have not prepared for: Endurance is built with

consistency, not acquired all at once.

If you still have doubts, try to think less about the possible aches and

pains and more about why we have arms and legs in the first place. Animals

use their limbs to find food and run from danger. Just because there are no

saber-toothed tigers around anymore doesn't mean we can't pretend.