Early Fitness Likely to Result in Healthier, Longer Life

A study has shown that cardiorespiratory fitness in early adulthood greatly reduces the risk in middle age of developing high blood pressure and diabetes, which are major risk factors for heart disease and stroke.

Fitness also reduces the risk for the metabolic syndrome, a group of factors that includes excess abdominal fat, elevated blood pressure and triglycerides, and low levels of high-density lipoprotein. Improving fitness in young adults can cut the risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome by as much as 50%. The findings were reported in the December 17, 2003, issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study involved 4,487 men and women 18-30 years old. All were followed for 15 years, but 2,478 had cardiopulmonary fitness tested again after seven years in order to measure changes. Cardiopulmonary fitness was measured with an exercise treadmill test. Subjects who were low or moderately fit had twice the risk of high blood pressure, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome as those who were highly fit. Weight gain was found to be inversely related to fitness over the course of the study, and those who were obese tended to be less fit.

"If all the young adults in our study had been fit, there would have been nearly a third fewer cases of high blood pressure, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome,” noted Dr. Mercedes Carnethon, department of preventive medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago (IL, USA), one of the researchers.




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