We all want the miracle cure. The pill, the potions, the surgery – anything that might make us look and feel younger.
Well – we thought we’d let you into a science backed secret that’s pretty important you know about. We’re nice like that 🙂
If you remember, last week I wrote about science based ways to train that improve short term Human Growth Hormone production. It’s an incredibly important hormone for longevity of life.
Why? Because HGH leads to increased strength, lean muscle mass, decreased body fat, improved bone density and a faster, more efficient metabolism, as well as having other regenerative benefits. Oh and it also improves mood, energy, sleep and skin tone.
As we age however, it reduces dramatically. Meaning the benefits we get from it begin to diminish.
But we can cheat it.
So how…?
Well, exercise in general will give a short term boost in HGH and the great news is – specific ways of training can amplify the effect for best results.
To recap that is short bursts of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) of no longer than 20 minutes. Followed by resistance training (weight bearing exercise) straight after if possible.
What’s exciting is two more studies not only reinforce the health benefits of varied training that we’ve mentioned above, but actually link exercise to life longevity in a HUGE study.
The first study looked at 4400 adults aged 50 or older who had their strength and muscle mass assessed between 1999 and 2002. The study checked in 2011 who was still living (I know a bit grim sorry!)
Incredibly those assessed with low muscle strength were over twice as likely to have died…
Interestingly muscle mass didn’t have an effect, it was purely the strength result. So functional strength decreases your mortality risk, as well as having plenty of other all around health benefits.
The second study looked at data from 80,000 adults in England and Scotland who’d completed surveys about physical activity during the 1990s.
The headline from this study is that those who’d done any kind of strength training were 23 percent less likely to have died during the study period, and 31% less likely to have died of cancer.
However, before you ditch your cardio and start lifting the weights, you might want to know this fact: those who did strength training and aerobic exercise had a 29% reduction in mortality. That’s almost a third…
In summary, mixing up strength training with aerobic activity not only gives you all kind of hormonal and health benefits, but can significantly reduce your mortality risk.
You’ll live longer, and because you’re training this way, you’ll have a better quality of life too.
This is exactly how we train, how we set up our programmes, how we train our clients. We’re looking for varied, challenging training that’s fun, and not only meets aesthetic goals, but delivers health goals over the long term. Now the data suggests it can also prolong your life.
Love to hear your thoughts and questions, so feel free to give us a shout.
References
Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2018 Mar;50(3):458-467
American Journal of Epidemiology. Volume 187, Issue 5, May 2018, Pages 1102–1112
