Slow jogging for as little as an hour a week increases life expectancy by five years in women and six years in men, a new study has found. The large scale study observed 20,000 people aged 20 to 93 over nearly 40 years and found that gentle jogging increased longevity more than running or other more vigorous forms of exercise. The study group included 1,116 male joggers and 762 female joggers, who were asked to rate the speed and frequency of their exercise.
Researchers then tracked their health over the next four decades and found that people who jogged at a “slow or average” pace for between 60 minutes and 2.5 hours a week were less likely to die than those who exercised more or not at all. Study also found that male joggers lived an average of 6.2 years longer and female joggers lived an extra 5.6 years. In this study the researchers again concluded that regular jogging increases longevity. The good news is that you don’t actually need to do that much to reap the benefits. You don’t need to go for extreme levels of exercise, moderate jogging can increase life expectancy. But non-joggers will never get benefits. So during exercise you should aim to feel a little out of breath, but not too much so.
