Researchers found that of the “least-fit” versus the “slightly more fit” in a recent study of nearly 4,400 healthy U.S. adults, roughly 20 percent with the lowest physical fitness levels were twice as likely to die over the nine years of the study as the 20 percent with the next-lowest fitness levels. (In other words, those 20 percent who were nearly at the lowest fitness levels.) This is the familiar “bad news/good news” situation. It is obviously bad news if you are a resolute sofa spud. However, it is definitely good news for those who haven’t quite hit rock bottom in the sedentary lifestyle department but are not, by any stretch of the imagination, energetic. Apparently, those men and women who remain even moderately fit as they grow older may have greater longevity than those who are totally out-of-shape, the study suggests.

Between 1986 and 2006, researchers evaluated the fitness levels of 4,384 middle-aged and senior men and women during exercise treatmill tests. The researchers then followed the study groups progress for approximately nine years. Such factors as obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure were taken into consideration in the study. This, in and of itself, accentuates the value of physical fitness itself. In an email to Reuters Health, Dr. Sandra Mandic, of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, and lead researcher of the study wrote: “Our findings suggest that a sedentary lifestyle, rather than differences in cardiovascular risk factors or age, may explain the two-fold higher mortality rates in the least-fit versus slightly more fit individuals.”

Nearly two-thirds of the participants at the least-fit level failed to get at least 30 minutes of moderate activity, five or more days a week, which was the minimum recommended amount of exercise. “These results emphasize the importance of improving and maintaining high fitness levels by engaging in regular physical activity,” Mandic said, “particularly in poorly-fit individuals.”

Classifying the participants into five groups based on fitness levels, the researchers determined that 25 percent of the least-fit individuals had died during the study period, versus 13 percent of those who were in slightly better shape. Only 6 percent of the most-fit group (i.e., the ones who “hit a bull’s eye,” so to speak) had died during the follow-up period.

The five fitness-level groups presented little dissimilarity, overall, in their reported exercise habits during most of their adult lives, but notably, they varied in activity levels only in recent years. “Since it is recent physical activity that offers protection,” Mandic said, “it is important to maintain regular physical activity throughout life.”

Since fitness is linked to longevity (and, in this case, despite weight and health conditions like high blood pressure and high cholesterol), And, naturally, imagine the health benefits we could all derive if we sought to achieve the higher levels of fitness.

SOURCE: Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, August 2009.

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