Study done by Dr. Sanjay Sharma.
By Raif Karerat
A British health expert of South Asian origin has stated that just 25 minutes of brisk walking a day can add up to seven years to your life.
Sanjay Sharma, professor of inherited cardiac diseases in sports cardiology at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in south London, said for the average person in their 50s and 60s, moderate exercise reduced the risk of dying from a heart attack by half.
“When people exercise regularly they may be able to retard the process of aging,” St. George’s University cardiologist Sharma said while presenting the findings at the European Society of Cardiology Congress, according to the Huffington Post.
A group of 69 healthy non-smokers, aged between 30 and 60, who did not take regular exercise were tested as part of the study at Saarland University in Germany.
Blood tests taken during six months of regular aerobic exercise, high-intensity interval training and strength training showed that an anti-ageing process had been triggered and helped repair old DNA.
“We may never avoid be-coming completely old, but we may delay the time we become old. We may look younger when we’re 70 and may live into our nineties,” Sharma said, according to The Independent. ““Exercise buys you three to seven additional years of life. It is an antidepressant, it improves cognitive function and there is now evidence that it may retard the onset of dementia.”
The authors found endurance exercise and high intensity exercise to be more efficient at achieving good health than just lifting weights, and is more likely to trigger the anti-ageing process.
“The more active you are, and it doesn’t matter when you start, the more benefit you are going to have,” Christi Deaton, a professor at the Cambridge Institute of Public Health, told the Daily Mail. “We recommend people who have cardiovascular disease or had myocardial infarction or heart failure to be physically active, because it’s beneficial for them; so there’s really no reason for healthy people not to exercise as well,” she added.