Training consistency and death

There is good news in a study being published in the Lancet journal that suggests a large reduction (20-35%) in risk of death in people aged 35-70 who engage in moderate to high levels of physical exercise.  This included recreational as well as non-recreational exercise.  Physical activity was graded as low (<150 minutes per week of moderate intensity physical activity), moderate (150-750 minutes per week), or high (>750 minutes per week).  So I guess that many of us who do not engage in physical exercise as part of our jobs would fall into the moderate exercise category.  The effect on death was 'dose-dependent' - in other words the more exercise somebody does the lower the risk of death.  There will be caveats to this.  If you have never run more than 5 K and then you decide to run a marathon, I suspect it wouldn't do you any good!  The findings were about physical activity sustained over a 7 year period.  So yet another reason for consistency in training! 

Reference
Lear SA, Hu W, Rangarajan S, Gasevic D, Leong D, Iqbal R et al. The effect of physical activity on mortality and cardiovascular disease in 130,000 people from 17 high-income, middle-income, and low-income countries: the PURE study. Lancet 2017; [Epub ahead of print]
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