Hack Old Age One Step at a Time

            We’re always talking about how to hack areas of our health for certain results, and longevity is always an area of focus for biohackers. New and novel supplements are coming out regularly which look promising for keeping cellular health in top condition, mitigating damage to cellular DNA, and even helping chromosomes last longer in the body’s cells. One of the best ways to lengthen your time on earth may not involve any of those at all!

            Research coming from the European Society of Cardiology studied the results of over seven thousand Korean senior adults who took health screening questionnaires. On average, people who took the survey were aged 87 with a little over half of the participants being women. The researchers divided the results into groups based on time spent walking, with a focus on slow walking rather than brisk walking. Then the results were divided into adults who did moderately intense or vigorous workouts.

          Most of the participants (57.5%) didn’t engage in any slow walking, and 8.5% walked slowly for less than an hour weekly. Two or more hours spent walking accounted for 12%, and 13.3% walked over three hours weekly. It’s currently recommended for overall health that adults of all ages should get at least 150 minutes of physical activity, including walking, per week. Less than 8% of the participants in this study were getting the minimum recommended amount of activity.

          About 33% of the seniors who were walking also took part in either moderate or intense exercise. Some seniors were engaging in moderately intense exercise (14.7%) and 10.9% were doing vigorous exercise. When researchers connected the amount of exercise and walking spent to the mortality risks and cardiovascular events of the seniors in the five-year study, they found that people who walked at least one hour per week cut their risk of general and cardiovascular mortality by 40%!

        Increasing lifespan could be attainable with as little as 10 minutes of walking every day of the week. It’s often harder to get proper amounts of exercise with age, but the results are clear: aim for as much as you can do, including exercising with moderate intensity, as some of these seniors did. More is better, but at least an hour of week can have amazing results for longevity once you pass age 85.

Further Reading

https://www.escardio.org/

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