Another good reason to pick up the pace a bit, BBB...

Sprint, Not Saunter, Is Key to Longer Life: Study

By Naomi Kresge - Aug 29, 2011 5:06 AM PT

Intense exercise adds more years to your life than more moderate activity, researchers said after studying the bicycle commuters who fill Copenhagen’s streets.

Men who described themselves as vigorous cyclists lived 5.3 years longer than self-described dawdlers in a 5,106-person study, scientists said at the European Society of Cardiology conference in Paris today. The difference was less pronounced for women, with fast bikers outliving slow ones by 3.9 years.

The study results add to a growing body of evidence that public health authorities should change recommendations to call for some vigorous instead of moderate daily exercise, lead researcher Peter Schnohr, a professor at Bispebjerg University Hospital in Copenhagen, told reporters today.

“You have to do some bursts where you are breathless” to improve the heart’s oxygen intake, Schnohr said in an interview. The return on that investment is “more than putting your money in the bank,” he said.

Schnohr’s team has followed about 20,000 people since 1976 in the Copenhagen City Heart Study. Today’s results were based on follow-up from assessments done on healthy people as old as 90 years of age between 1991 and 1994.

The researchers didn’t try to quantify intense exercise, leaving it up to participants to say what qualified as vigorous for them. The cycling results match an earlier analysis of walking speeds done in the Copenhagen heart study, Schnohr said.

Self-described average-speed cyclists also saw a benefit, with men living 2.9 years longer and women 2.2 years longer than their slower peers.

The best results came from vigorous daily exercise of between a half hour and an hour, the study shows. People who biked fast for more than an hour saw a smaller benefit.

Copenhagen has one of the highest rates of bicycle commuting in Europe, with people cycling an average 1.21 million kilometers (750,000 miles) a day last year, according to a report compiled by the mayor’s office every two years.  [emphasis is mine]





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