A new study led by researchers at the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, found that older adults who do many different types of leisure activities every week, like walking for exercise, jogging, swimming laps, or playing tennis, may have a lower risk of dying from any cause, as well as from heart disease and cancer.
The results show that older people should spend their free time doing things they enjoy and can keep up with, because many of these activities may lower the risk of dying, the authors wrote.
The findings were published on JAMA Network Open today.
Using information from 272,550 adults between the ages of 59 and 82 who filled out questionnaires about their free time activities as part of the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study, researchers looked at whether doing the same amount of seven different types of exercise and recreation, such as running, cycling, swimming, other aerobic exercise, racquet sports, golf, and walking for exercise, was linked to a lower risk of death.
Getting the appropriate amount of exercise each week through any of these activities was related to a 13% decreased risk of dying from any cause, compared with not getting the recommended amount of exercise at all.
When they looked at each activity on its own, they found that racquet sports were linked to a 16% lower risk and running was linked to a 15% lower risk. But all of the activities that were looked into were linked to lower death rates.
Adults should do 1.25 to 2.5 hours of strenuous aerobic physical activity per week, or 2.5 to 5 hours of moderate aerobic physical activity per week, according to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, second edition.
People who were the most active (those who did more than the recommended amount of physical activity) had a lower risk of dying even than those who were less active, but the risk reductions got smaller as the amount of activity went up.
Even those who engaged in some recreational activity, even if it was less than what was advised, had a 5% lower risk of dying than those who did not engage in any of the activities examined.
Additionally, these activities were linked to a lower chance of dying from cancer and cardiovascular disease.
The biggest reduction in risk of death from cardiovascular disease (27%) was linked to playing racquet sports, while the highest reduction in risk of death from cancer (19%) was associated with jogging.
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