Running Just Minutes a Day Reduces Mortality Risk

Iowa State University researchers suggest in a new study that running at a slow speed for as little as 5 minutes to 10 minutes a day can greatly reduce mortality risk, potentially adding 3 years to an individual’s life expectancy.

In an assessment of data of 55,137 adults between the ages of 18 and 100 years—who disclosed their physical activity through a medical history questionnaire—the investigators analyzed the causes of any deaths that took place over the course of a 15-year follow-up period, before looking at the amount of exercise each participant took part in every week.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

RELATED CONTENT
Acute Ankle Pain in a Runner
Your Running Days Are Numbered!
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

During the follow-up period, 3,413 participants died from all-causes, with 1,217 dying as a result of cardiovascular causes. Among them, 24 percent ran on a weekly basis. The authors found that participants who engaged in running each week were 30 percent less likely to die from all-causes, and 45 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular causes, in comparison to those who did not run. Overall, runners were likely to live 3 years longer than non-runners.

The researchers also found that these reduced mortality risks were the same for those who ran less than 1 hour a week as well those who ran more than 3 hours a week. All-cause and cardiovascular mortality risks were significantly reduced among those running even 5 to 10 minutes a day at a slow speed, compared to non-runners.

Noting that running for long periods of time may cause bone or joint damage, or even heart attacks, the authors say their findings underscore the substantial health benefits that can be reaped by running for even a few minutes on a daily basis, while stressing that more study is necessary.

“I do not think that our data showed that running does more harm than good,” says Timothy Church, MD, MPH, PhD, a professor in the preventive medicine laboratory at Louisiana State University’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center, and a co-author of the study.

“Really, it showed that the benefit curve flattens out, and that, while there is clearly benefit at higher levels, the error bars expand, which just means we need even more data.”

—Mark McGraw

Reference

Lee D, Pate R, et al. Leisure-Time Running Reduces All-Cause and Cardiovascular Mortality Risk. JACC. 2014.