If you are looking for a form of cardiovascular exercise that will improve your current health, both physically and mentally, and add years to your life expectancy, jogging may be just what the doctor ordered, according to a new jogging life expectancy study recently published by a group of Danish researchers.
In the study, women who jogged frequently added an average of 5.6 years to their lives, while men fared even better with a life expectancy increase of 6.2 years.
Just how frequent is “frequent jogging?” Regardless of how many sessions it entails, jogging for between 1 and 2.5 hours each week at a slow-to-average pace offers the most significant benefits, according to Dr. Peter Schnohr, cardiologist and researcher for the Copenhagen City Heart Study.
A 44% Decrease in Death Risk, Study Concludes
During the study, Schnohr and a team of other researchers examined mortality data for a total of 1,878 joggers – 762 of them female, and 1,116 male. This mortality data was then compared to death rates of individuals who rarely or never jogged. The total study pool, including both joggers and non-joggers, comprised approximately 20,000 individuals.
In addition to analyzing mortality data, the researchers asked the study participants to respond to questionnaires regarding their jogging habits, including their pace (slow, average or fast) and the amount of time they devoted to jogging per week.
Over the course of the 35-year study, 122 of the joggers and 10,158 of the non-joggers died from various causes. The researchers said that this represents a 44% decrease in the risk of death for joggers vs. non-joggers over the course of 35 years.
Too Much or Too Little Jogging Boosts Death Risk
The researchers also discovered that, as with most things in life, moderation is key to the life-extending properties of jogging. The longest-lived participants in the study spent approximately 1 to 2.5 hours jogging each week. Mortality rates were higher among those who jogged for less than one hour per week, as well as for those who jogged for more than 2.5 hours per week.
In a statement accompanying the study results, Schnohr said he’s now sure that “regular jogging increases longevity. The good news is that you don’t actually need to do that much to reap the benefits.”
To put things in perspective, 2.5 hours of jogging per week could be broken up into five daily sessions lasting 30 minutes each. This type of exercise plan is representative of other common recommendations for regular physical activity.
Jogging Life Expectancy: The Bottom Line
Researchers in Denmark have discovered that jogging for 1 to 2.5 hours each week will increase your life expectancy by approximately 5 to 6 years. The researchers announced their findings just a few days ago at the Dublin meeting of the European Society of Cardiology.
