Health Benefits of Running

Is Running bad for your Knee? Everyone somehow acknowledge that there are many benefits in running but most people fear that this exercise will injure or damage their knee, especially those middle age and above. There was a research studied 538 runners and 423 healthy controls for 21 years.

BBC News, Monday, 11 August 2008 00:48 UK

The work tracked 500 older runners for more than 20 years, comparing them to a similar group of non-runners. All were in their 50s at the start of the study.

Nineteen years into the study, 34% of the non-runners had died compared to only 15% of the runners. Both groups became more disabled with age, but for the runners the onset of disability started later - an average of 16 years later.

The health gap between the runners and non-runners continued to widen even as the subjects entered their ninth decade of life.

If you had to pick one thing to make people healthier as they age, it would be aerobic exercise Lead author Professor James Fries

Running not only appeared to slow the rate of heart and artery related deaths, but was also associated with fewer early deaths from cancer, neurological disease, infections and other causes.

And there was no evidence that runners were more likely to suffer osteoarthritis or need total knee replacements than non-runners - something scientists have feared.

At the beginning of the study, the runners ran for about four hours a week on average. After 21 years, their weekly running time had reduced to around 76 minutes, but they were still seeing health benefits from taking regular exercise.

Lead author Professor James Fries, emeritus professor of medicine at Stanford, said: "The study has a very pro-exercise message. If you had to pick one thing to make people healthier as they age, it would be aerobic exercise.

"The health benefits of exercise are greater than we thought." Age Concern says many older people do not exercise enough.

Extract from Archives of Internal Medicine

Vol. 168 No. 15, pp. 1602-1720, Aug 11/25, 2008

Reduced Disability and Mortality Among Aging Runners

A 21-Year Longitudinal Study

Eliza F. Chakravarty, MD, MS; Helen B. Hubert, PhD; Vijaya B. Lingala, PhD; James F. Fries, MD

Arch Intern Med. 2008;168(15):1638-1646.

Background  Exercise has been shown to improve many health outcomes and well-being of people of all ages. Long-term studies in older adults are needed to confirm disability and survival benefits of exercise.

Methods  Annual self-administered questionnaires were sent to 538 members of a nationwide running club and 423 healthy controls from northern California who were 50 years and older beginning in 1984. Data included running and exercise frequency, body mass index, and disability assessed by the Health Assessment Questionnaire Disability Index (HAQ-DI; scored from 0 [no difficulty] to 3 [unable to perform]) through 2005. A total of 284 runners and 156 controls completed the 21-year follow-up. Causes of death through 2003 were ascertained using the National Death Index. Multivariate regression techniques compared groups on disability and mortality.

Results  At baseline, runners were younger, leaner, and less likely to smoke compared with controls. The mean (SD) HAQ-DI score was higher for controls than for runners at all time points and increased with age in both groups, but to a lesser degree in runners (0.17 [0.34]) than in controls (0.36 [0.55]) (P < .001). Multivariate analyses showed that runners had a significantly lower risk of an HAQ-DI score of 0.5 (hazard ratio, 0.62; 95% confidence interval, 0.46-0.84). At 19 years, 15% of runners had died compared with 34% of controls. After adjustment for covariates, runners demonstrated a survival benefit (hazard ratio, 0.61; 95% confidence interval, 0.45-0.82). Disability and survival curves continued to diverge between groups after the 21-year follow-up as participants approached their ninth decade of life.

Conclusion  Vigorous exercise (running) at middle and older ages is associated with reduced disability in later life and a notable survival advantage.

Author Affiliations: Division of Immunology and Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California.

NOTE: This is an abstract and the full report can be access following this link http://archinte.ama-assn.org/