Weight Training and Aerobics Lower Early Death Risk

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Highlights:

• Strength-building exercises seem less attractive because they are more intense
• These exercises that promote muscular strength are as important as aerobics for health
• In fact, they may help lower the risk of death duet to all-cause and promote longevity

Regularly exercising with weights is linked to a lower risk of death from any cause, except cancer, finds research carried out on older adults and published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Current guidelines recommend at least 150 weekly minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, or a minimum of 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity, or an equal combination of the two-usually referred to as MVPA (moderate to vigorous physical activity).

‘The weekly exercise routine that includes lifting weights and aerobic exercise will expand the longevity of life.’

All adults are also recommended to incorporate activities that work for all the major muscle groups. Yet while aerobic exercise is consistently associated with a lower risk of death, it's not clear if working out with weights might have similar effects.

Does Weight Lifting Make you Live Longer?

To plug this knowledge gap, researchers set out to evaluate separately and jointly the potential impact of exercising with weights and aerobic activities on the risk of death among older adults.

They drew on participants from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial. This began in 1993 and includes 154,897 men and women aged 55-74 from 10 different cancer centers in the United States.

In 2006, 104,002 of the participants were additionally asked if they had exercised with weights over the past year, and if so, how often they had done so-anything from less than once a month to several times a week (1^✔).

And they were asked about the frequency and duration of both moderate and vigorous intensity physical activity over the past year.

Moderate intensity was described as an activity where you worked up a light sweat or increased your breathing and heart rate to moderately high levels and vigorous activity is �an activity strenuous enough to work up a sweat or increase your breathing and heart rate to very high levels (2^✔).

Four activity groups were generated based on total weekly minutes of MVPA: (1) inactive, 0 minutes; (2) insufficient aerobic MVPA, 1-149 minutes; (3) sufficient, 150+ minutes of moderate, or an equivalent amount of vigorous, activity; and (4) highly active, 301 or more minutes of moderate, or an equivalent amount of vigorous, activity.

In all, the responses of 99,713 people were included in the final analysis, 28,477 of whom died over an average of 9� years of monitoring. Their average age at the start of the monitoring period was 71, and their average weight (BMI) was 27.8 kg/m2 which is defined as overweight.

How Much Exercise Is Needed to Live Longer?

Nearly 1 in 4 (23%) respondents reported some weightlifting activity; 16% said they exercised with weights regularly between one to six times a week. Nearly a third (32%) were sufficiently aerobically active, either meeting (24%) or exceeding (8%) the guidelines on MVPA.

Exercising with weights and aerobic MVPA were both independently associated with a lower risk of death from any cause, as well as from cardiovascular disease, but not from cancer.

Overall, working out with weights in the absence of MVPA was associated with a 9-22% lower risk of death, depending on the amount: for example, using weights once or twice a week was associated with a 14% lower risk.

Similarly, among those who didn't exercise with weights, aerobic MVPA was associated with a 24-34% lower risk of death from any cause, compared with those who reported neither MVPA nor exercising with weights. But the lowest risk of death was seen among those who said they did both types of physical activity (3^✔).

Educational attainment, smoking, BMI, race, and ethnicity didn't significantly change the associations observed, but sex did: the associations were stronger in women.

This is an observational study that can't establish cause, added to which it relied on personal recall and included data from a single point in time.

Specific details on training intensity, training load, volume (sets and repetitions), and for how long participants had been exercising with weights weren't available, all of which may have influenced the findings.

This finding that mortality risk appeared to be lowest for those who participated in both types of exercise provides strong support for current recommendations to engage in both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities. Older adults would probably benefit from adding weightlifting exercises to their physical activity routines.

References:

1. Effects of aerobic and/or resistance training on body mass and fat mass in overweight or obese adults - (https:www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3544497/)
2. Health benefits of physical activity: the evidence - (https:www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1402378/)
3. Muscle-strengthening activities are associated with lower risk and mortality in major non-communicable diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies - (https:bjsm.bmj.com/content/56/13/755.citation-tools)

Source: Medindia

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