Never Too Late to Start Exercising

Here's another article by our Well Past 50 fitness guru Angela about late-in-life exercising. Even if you haven't been that active in the past, the good news is that even if you start exercising in your late 40's or 50's, your heart will benefit by the increase in activity.

It's Not Too Late to Start Exercising
Even if you don't start exercising until later in life, you can reduce your risk of heart disease by up to 90 percent by exercising regularly. This was an unexpected learning from a study that compared healthy individuals and those with heart disease to determine how different exercise regimes impact heart disease risk. As expected, lifetime exercisers had the lowest risk, but even those who didn’t start exercising until later in life achieved surprising reductions in risk.

The German study, which was published in the journal Heart, compared data collected from 312 people with heart disease and more than 450 healthy, age-matched blood donors who were all older than 40.This study looked back in time at the subjects exercise history in each decade of their life. The subjects reported whether they were "rarely active", a "little active", "somewhat active", or "very active" for different age ranges. The researchers found that the group that achieved the most risk-reducing benefit from exercise included those people who went from "rarely active" to being "very active" in later adulthood. That group of very active people over 40 years of age had 90 percent less heart disease than their sedentary counterparts.

Of course researchers were not surprised to find that those who were active throughout adulthood (age 20-40) had a much lower (62% less) risk of heart disease than those who didn't exercise at all. In fact, this group had the lowest risk of heart disease. But, those people who were active at a young age and then became inactive over time had a risk for heart disease that was similar to someone who had never exercised at all.

The key messages that you can take away to reduce your risk of heart disease:

• If you are a younger adult who is already exercising regularly, then you should maintain an active lifestyle throughout adulthood.
• Adults over 40 who are only "somewhat active" will benefit from increasing their activity.
• Even if you have been sedentary and you're over 40, beginning an exercise program will protect your heart health. You will achieve the most benefit by making it a goal to be very active, but even slight increases in activity are worthwhile.