What would you pay for ten more years?

kw: analysis, longevity, health

By taking one simple step, making one change, one intervention, most sedentary folks can add ten healthy years to their lives. I have several friends who are physicians. One of them who speaks at church conferences recently made a statement to those who are 50 and over. I checked on it with others, and they all agree with him. He said,

"If you are not already exercising daily, adding exercise to what you are doing every day will add, on average, ten years to your life."

Upon further checking, I found that these are not ten years of poor quality; the final decline that we all must undergo if we are not taken suddenly by accident or illness will be delayed by ten years. Even more, it is likely that the early years of decline will be better also, effectively increasing our "health span" by more than ten years.

I once heard someone scoff, "Sure, I can exercise hours and hours for some added time. But will there be added non-exercising time?" That is, must you spend so much time in exercise that your time to enjoy other stuff is the same, just occurring later on? Let's investigate.

Consider the average fifty-year-old. If male, remaining life expectancy is 30 years, to age 80; if female, it is 33 years, to age 83. Adding exercise to gain ten years could yield either 90 or 93 total years. Ten years is 3,652.5 days, and with 16 waking hours per day, that comes to 58,440 waking hours. Let's use the figures for a male. Suppose that he must devote that whole 58,440 hours to exercise, spread over 40 years. How much is that? The simple calculation is this:

58,440 / (4×3,652.5) = 4 hr/d, or 1/4 of his waking hours.

This means that, if someone must add four daily hours of exercise, and must to keep it up for forty years to gain ten years of longevity, all the waking hours of the extra ten years will be spent exercising. He could take it easy instead, and it would be a wash. But how much is actually needed?

How much daily exercising time does my friend say is needed to get the ten-year bonus? Half an hour. That is, half an hour of doing something that increases heart rate, and leads to at least a "glow", if not becoming sweaty, by the end of the half hour. A half hour daily adds up to 7,305 hours spread over the forty years.

If it is legitimate to do so, we can put this figure into simple terms: Each year gained was "paid for" by 730.5 hours of exercise, or a half hour daily for four years. Four years of daily exercise gains an added year of healthy life.

Now, take care: This is not a linear relationship, so going for an hour instead of half an hour isn't going to give you twenty added years. It could add some, but I don't know how much. I remember Jack LaLanne, a fitness guru of the 1950's and '60's. His daily exercise routine was 4-5 hours of all kinds of exercise. He lived to age 96 years and 4 months. How long would he have lived without so much exercise? I don't know. But I do know that he enjoyed exercise, so it wasn't drudgery to him.

Exercise is drudgery to most of us who aren't already gym rats. But that half hour isn't too high a price to pay for the extra time it yields. This is the take-away message for someone fifty or so:

Break a sweat each day for four days, and gain a full day of life! Do so for the rest of your life, and you'll have lived an extra ten years.