Living longer through exercise

Living longer through exercise - what should you be prioritizing?

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As far as longevity interventions go, the most accessible, cost-effective and powerful tool available is exercise.

Even a ten-minute walk can bring immediate benefits to your health, and recent research has shown that committing to a sustained regime can improve your health and lifespan far more than you may think. 

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Different forms of exercise bring their own unique benefits. Here we will focus on three main types of exercise and examine how each of them relates to longevity.

• Aerobic exercise improves overall fitness, protects against a wide range of diseases, and is strongly correlated with better cognitive performance and brain health. 
• Resistance training decreases the biological age of cells and is linked to decreased risk of falls and frailty, as well as higher levels of testosterone, growth hormone, and cortisol. 
• High-intensity interval training (HIIT) enhances cardiorespiratory fitness and improves metabolic function, vascular (blood vessels and heart) function, and cellular energy production.

We will also explore how you can exercise to best reach your unique longevity goals and dive a little into the studies which support these recommendations. 

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Aerobic exercise

Aerobic exercise (also known as cardiovascular exercise or moderate-intensity continuous training) is sustained activity such as walking, running, swimming, or cycling. Regular aerobic exercise improves your overall fitness, facilitating benefits such as decreased fat, lower blood pressure and improved insulin sensitivity, thereby lowering the risk of many chronic diseases. Aerobic exercise was also recently linked to a lower biological age (i.e. age calculated according to how old your cells appear, rather than chronological years) ^[1].

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Less well-known, is the profound benefit that aerobic exercise can have on memory and cognition. Aerobic exercise causes an immediate improvement in prefrontal cortex function - meaning enhanced focus, short-term memory, and decision making - that can last up to 2 hours ^[2]. So if you’re cramming for an exam or tackling a difficult problem at work, don’t skip the cardio workout! Aerobic exercise also causes the release of a chemical called BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) which stimulates growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus ^[3]. The hippocampus is responsible for memory, so increasing its volume can delay or even prevent the onset of dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases. Current research suggests that just 30 minutes of aerobic exercise 3–4 times/week is sufficient to bring about these amazing effects.

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Resistance training

Resistance training involves lifting weights (or your own bodyweight) in order to build up muscle mass and strength.

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Resistance training helps combat the natural loss of muscle typically associated with aging and builds up bone density. This is important for longevity because low muscle strength and bone density has been linked to a 2.3-fold increased risk of death ^[4] due to frailty and increased fall risk. Resistance training also impacts longevity on a cellular level, with one study showing that a 12-week strength training regime decreased biomarkers of cell aging ^[5]. Finally, resistance training raises levels of anabolic hormones such as testosterone, growth hormone, and cortisol, which naturally decline with age ^[6]. These hormonal changes can be seen after just one resistance training session, but many of the sustained benefits come through adopting a regular regime, usually involving 2–3 sessions/week.

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High-intensity interval training

HIIT has seen a surge in interest over the last few decades as a more time-efficient and manageable method for achieving the health benefits of exercise. It involves bursts of high-intensity exercise between low-intensity recovery periods. For example, running for 2 minutes on a treadmill at 90% intensity, then walking for 2 minutes as recovery, then running at high intensity again, and so on.

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One of the reasons why HIIT is great for longevity is the impact it has on your body’s VO₂max, which is the maximum amount of oxygen your body is able to use and a key marker of overall fitness. A study of over 120,000 adults found that the quarter of participants with the lowest VO₂max were 4 times more likely to die in the next 10 years than the quarter with the highest VO₂max ^[7]. It also showed that this increased risk of mortality caused by having a below average VO₂max was equivalent to the increase caused by smoking or having diabetes.

In other words, having a below average VO₂max increases your risk of death as much as smoking or diabetes!

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Animal studies have shown that HIIT produces far better improvements in metabolic function than aerobic exercise ^[8]. In humans, it has been found that adults who adhered to a HIIT regime 3 times a week showed a greater improvement in vascular function than those who performed aerobic exercise instead ^[9]. Also, in a study comparing HIIT to resistance training, only HIIT was shown to improve age-related decline of mitochondria (the crucial parts of the cell where energy is produced) ^[10]. In most studies, the effects are seen when HIIT regimes are carried out at least 2 or 3 times a week.

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Conclusion

In practical terms, it’s incredibly difficult to reach the ideal thresholds for all three forms of exercise, since that would mean doing 3–4 sessions of aerobic exercise, 2–3 sessions of resistance training, and 2–3 HIIT sessions each week. Instead, we recommend choosing your forms of exercise based on your personal longevity goals. Whether you wish to focus on brain health (aerobic fitness), musculoskeletal health (strength training), or cardiorespiratory health (HIIT), your exercise program should reflect your unique aims and situation. If you need help figuring out a program that works for you, or want to analyze your longevity goals with an expert, check out our personalized longevity coaching program.

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References

1. Lehallier, B., Shokhirev, M. N., Wyss-Coray, T., & Johnson, A. A. Data mining of human plasma proteins generates a multitude of highly predictive aging clocks that reflect different aspects of aging. Aging Cell 19, e13256 (2020) Link
2. Basso, J. C., Shang, A., Elman, M., Karmouta, R., & Suzuki, W. A. Acute Exercise Improves Prefrontal Cortex but not Hippocampal Function in Healthy Adults. J Int Neuropsychol Soc 21(10), 791–801 (2015) Link
3. Basso, J. C., & Suzuki, W. A. The Effects of Acute Exercise on Mood, Cognition, Neurophysiology, and Neurochemical Pathways: A Review. Brain Plast 2(2), 127–152 (2017) Link
4. Li, R., Xia, J., Zhang, X. I., et al. Associations of Muscle Mass and Strength with All-Cause Mortality among US Older Adults. Med Sci Sports Exerc 50(3), 458–467 (2018) Link
5. Englund, D. A., Sakamoto, A. E., Fritsche, C. M., et al. . Exercise reduces circulating biomarkers of cellular senescence in humans. Aging cell 20(7), e13415 (2021) Link
6. Kraemer, W. J., & Ratamess, N. A. Hormonal responses and adaptations to resistance exercise and training. Sports Med 35(4), 339–361 (2005) Link
7. Mandsager, K., Harb, S., Cremer, P., et al. Association of Cardiorespiratory Fitness With Long-term Mortality Among Adults Undergoing Exercise Treadmill Testing. JAMA Netw Open 1(6), e183605 (2018) Link
8. Wang, N., Liu, Y., Ma, Y., & Wen, D. High-intensity interval versus moderate-intensity continuous training: Superior metabolic benefits in diet-induced obesity mice. Life Sci 191, 122–131 (2017) Link
9. Ramírez-Vélez, R., Hernández-Quiñones, P. A., Tordecilla-Sanders, A., et al. Effectiveness of HIIT compared to moderate continuous training in improving vascular parameters in inactive adults. Lipids Health Dis 18(42) (2019) Link‍
10. Robinson, M. M., Dasari, S., Konopka, A. R., et al. Enhanced Protein Translation Underlies Improved Metabolic and Physical Adaptations to Different Exercise Training Modes in Young and Old Humans. Cell Metab 25(3), 581–592 (2017) Link

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