Sunday, December 15, 2024

Never stop working out especially when you are older

Good news! No made up excuses for older people! 😊

As the well known adage says, if you don't use it you lose it!

"Regular exercise has been associated with lower risk of death. Martinez-Gomez et al. investigated whether this association is affected by age, analyzing data from more than 2 million individuals 20 to 97 years of age. The results showed that the negative correlation between physical activity and mortality is present in all age groups and becomes stronger in older individuals. By contrast, the association between mortality risk and other modifiable health factors, including smoking, education level, alcohol consumption, body weight, hypertension, and diabetes, decreases with age. How much these effects are due to the exercise itself or are confounded by healthier individuals being able to do exercise remains to be disentangled."

From the key points and abstract:
"Key Points
Question  Does age modify the associations between physical activity and all-cause mortality?

Findings
In this cohort study using a pooled analysis of 4 multi-country megacohorts including more than 2 million individuals aged 20 to 97 years, the beneficial association between meeting the physical activity recommendation (eg, 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity physical activity) and mortality was greater as age increased. For other modifiable health factors, the associations were remarkably smaller as age increased.

Meaning
The magnitude of the association between physical activity and mortality risk remains mainly consistent across the adult lifespan; therefore, promotion of physical activity is essential at all stages of adult life.

Abstract
Importance  Physical activity (PA) guidelines recommend the same amount of PA through adulthood to live longer.

Objective
To explore whether there is an age-dependent association between PA and all-cause mortality and to investigate the age-dependent associations between other modifiable health factors (high educational level, not smoking, not regularly consuming alcohol, healthy body weight, and living without hypertension and diabetes) and mortality.

Design, Setting, and Participants
This cohort study used a pooled analysis of 4 population-based prospective cohorts (National Health Interview Survey, 1997-2018; UK Biobank, 2006-2010; China Kadoorie Biobank, 2004-2008; and Mei Jau, 1997-2016). Data were analyzed from June 2022 to September 2024.

Exposures  
Self-reported leisure-time PA.

Main Outcomes and Measures
The primary outcome was deaths identified through follow-up linkage to national death registries. Analyses were performed for the total sample and by age groups (20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, and ≥80 years). Cox proportional hazards regression models with stratification by study were used to calculate mortality hazard ratios and their 95% CIs for the pooled dataset and by age group.

Results
A heterogeneous sample of 2 011 186 individuals (mean [SD] age, 49.1 [14.3] years; age range, 20-97 years;
1 105 581 women [55.0%]) were included. After a median (IQR) follow-up of 11.5 (9.3-13.5) years, 177 436 deaths occurred. The association between PA and mortality in the total sample showed a nonlinear dose-response pattern, but age modified this association (P for interaction <.001); PA was consistently associated with a lower risk of mortality across all age groups, but the reduction in risk was greater in older vs younger age groups, especially at high levels of PA. The hazard ratio for mortality associated with meeting the recommended PA in the total sample was 0.78 (95% CI, 0.77-0.79). This inverse association between meeting PA recommendations and mortality was somewhat greater as age increased (P for interaction <.001). Age also modified the associations of the other modifiable health factors with mortality (all P for interaction <.001), but the magnitude of associations was greater in younger vs older age groups.

Conclusions and Relevance
In this pooled analysis of cohort studies, the association between PA and mortality risk remained consistent across the adult lifespan, which contrasts with other modifiable health factors, for which associations with mortality risk diminished with age. Given these findings, the promotion of regular PA is essential at all stages of adult life."

In Other Journals | Science

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