Being Fit May Be as Good for You as Not Smoking
A new study found a strong correlation between endurance and living a long life.
Being in shape may be as important to a long life as not smoking, according to an interesting new study of the links between fitness and mortality.
The study also explores whether there is any ceiling to the benefits of fitness — whether, in essence, you can exercise too much. The answer, it found, is a reassuring no.
At this point, we should not be surprised to hear that people who exercise and have high aerobic endurance tend to live longer than those who are sedentary and out of shape. A large body of past research has linked exercise with longevity and indicated that people who work out tend also to be people with lengthy, healthy lives.
But much of this research relied on asking people about their exercise routines, a practice that is known to elicit unreliable answers.
