Run for your life

The American College of Cardiologists published an experiment which revealed that running from 5 to 10 minutes each day you can significantly increase your life span and, at the same time, reduce risks of getting a heart disease and dying young.

Runners have a 30% lower risk of death and a 45% lower risk of dying from a cardiovascular disease than people who prefer not to run as a form of exercise.

The average life span of a runner is three years longer than a non-runner.

An interesting point is that the benefits of running were the same no matter if people ran a little or a lot, slow or fast. Statistically, there were no significant differences between those who ran 50 minutes or 180 minutes per week or those who ran at 10km/h or slower pace.

‘Since time is one of the strongest barriers to participate in physical activity, the study may motivate more people to start running,’ said Duckchul Lee, leading author of the study.

The study consisted in tracking the physical activities and health state of 55,000 people with an average age of 44, over a 15 years time-span.

The participants were split into 6 separate groups, non-runners, and five groups of runners divided by weekly running time, distance, frequency and speed.

Findings showed that: ‘Even the lowest quintiles of weekly running distance (10km or under), frequency (one to two times) and speed (under 10km/h) had significantly lower risks of all-cause mortality compared with not running. Similar trends were observed with the risk of cardiovascular disease mortality.’

Other findings related to walking as compared to running showed that 15 minutes of walking equals a five-minute run and has the same benefits.