Fitness in middle age can beat strokes

Exercise is fun; that’s enough reason to do it but we all know that it is also good for you. When you are younger exercise is almost an unavoidable part of life but it is particularly good for you to keep exercising as you age and a new study has reinforced that fact showing that exercising in middle age reduces your risk of stroke.

According to the Stroke Foundation stroke is one of Australia’s leading causes of death and disability. Each year 50,000 people will suffer new or recurrent strokes which breaks down to 1,000 per week or one every ten minutes. Estimates are that one in every six people experience stroke in their lifetime and 65 per cent of those will experience disability that impedes their ability to carry out the daily tasks of life unassisted. So if you can do something to reduce your risk of having a stroke that not only benefits you, it benefits those around you as well.

A new study has reinforced that fact showing that exercising in middle age reduces your risk of stroke.

The new study analysed data from 19,815 adults who were part of the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study that took place between 1970 and 2009. When the subjects were aged 45-50 they took part in treadmill tests to measure their cardiorespiratory fitness. This measures how well the heart and lungs can supply the muscles with oxygen and based on the results subjects were classified as having low, middle, or high cardiorespiratory fitness.

The subjects were tracked to see who experienced stroke and it emerged that those people who had the highest levels of cardiorespiratory fitness had a 37 per cent lower risk of stroke after age 65 than those with the lowest levels. This connection existed even after factoring out conditions like high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and atrial fibrillation.

If you know you need to exercise but just can’t make yourself find time to do it, there’s the motivation you need.