Scientists in California found that middle-aged people who ran for 40 minutes a day, for a total of about 5 hours per week, lived longer and functioned better physically and cognitively as they got older. The researchers tracked runners and nonrunners for 21 years.
Really? That is shocking.
"What surprised us is that the runners didn't just get less heart disease — they also developed fewer cases of cancer, neurologic diseases, and infections," says study author Eliza Chakravarty, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. "Aerobic exercise keeps the immune system young." If you don't like to run, even 20 minutes a day of any activity that leaves you breathless can boost your health, she says.
Here is a link to the entire article. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/32272813/ns/health-aging/
Isn't this kind of a "duh" moment? First of all, to get to 5 hours a week, you really need to run 43 minutes per day, 7 days a week. If you are running that much, OF COURSE YOU'RE GOING TO BE IN BETTER SHAPE. Chances are that when you run that much, you probably don't make In-N-Out burger a regular haunt. You probably take really good care of yourself and eat right. So, just saying running every day for 43 minutes is going to offer all these health benefits is so irresponsible. Coffee is good for you. Coffee is bad for you. No, coffee is good for you. Ugh. What is the truth?
I say we come up with our own research. Here is one that happened this week. Robert and I went to dinner where I had a cocktail and a bottle of wine. The next morning, I woke up at 5:30 with a HUGE hangover. I proceeded to my group run at 6 am, where I had a great run, probably one of my best. Conclusion: To run faster and longer, drink a bunch the night before. Another one: Eating a huge steak, au gratin potatoes, asparagus in butter, and dessert might interfere with weight loss. Conclusion: Pigging out won't help you lose weight. See? This isn't really so hard. Here is one I would like to see: Broccoli is bad for you (I hate the stuff). Maybe a research conclusion that 1 cupcake a day will make you taller. THAT WOULD BE AWESOME! Yes, let's do that one. Anyone want to be my test subject? Control group?
1 comment:
No, your research will roll me--especially the one cocktail (which I wouldn't probably normally have) but go straight to the bottle of wine. Now, since you were with Robert, the assumption was that you all shared the bottle of wine. I could be in the group that skips the cocktail AND the sharing of the bottle and goes straight to drinking the entire bottle, in which you can still randomly state, "I had only one last night". This can translate into one drink OR, in my case, one bottle. I still run every day--my system in immune to having too much (most of the time except Friday AND Sat. at the lake Labor Day weekend as my kids were with their grandparents and I felt the need to celebrate for the full 48 hours--this took me down for about the last 48 hours). --Krys
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