The Washington Post (5/17, Reynolds) reports a study suggests that “being in good shape during middle age was associated with about a 2 to 3% improvement in both health span and lifespan, translating to about a year and a half to two years of longer, healthier living.” The researchers tracked thousands of midlife men and women who visited a Dallas clinic “for checkups, most of which included treadmill tests to estimate aerobic capacity.” They “followed people’s Medicare records deep into retirement and usually until death, noting if and when they developed any of 11 common and serious age-related conditions.” They concluded that “people who had been the most fit in middle age lived longer in old age than less-fit people, with fewer diseases that appeared later.” Specifically, participants in the fittest group “tended to develop their first major illness, if any, about 1½ years later in life than people in the least-fit group.” The study was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
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