Physical Fitness Helps
Make
Up For Bad Habits.
Even active smokers with high blood pressure have an advantage
over out-of-shape nonsmokers.
By Brenda C. Coleman
The Associated Press
Being physically fit is such a powerful force for health
that even smokers with high blood pressure and high cholesterol who
are in good aerobic shape tend to live longer than nonsmoking couch
potatoes who are otherwise healthy, a study found.
"Low fitness, which of course is caused primarily by a sedentary
way of life, is really a very important risk factor" for early
death, said lead author Steven Blair, director of research for the Cooper
Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas.
His team studied 25,341 men and 7,080 women who received physicals at
the clinic between 1970 and 1989. After an average of 8 ½ years
of follow-up, 601 men and 89 women had died.
The one-fifth of men who were least fit, as measured in a treadmill
test, were found to be 52 percent more likely to die over the study
period that the two-fifths of men who were most fit, the researchers
found.
That figure was derived from a statistical analysis that controlled
for differences in other traits that affect death, such as age, weight,
researchers said.
Men who were most fit and who smoked, had high blood pressure and high
cholesterol, Blair said.
Similar trends were found among the women.
Subjects in the study who were most fit got more exercise than the minimum
recommended by the surgeon general- 30 minutes of accumulated moderate
activity daily. That could be by adding jogging or swimming two or three
times a week, Blair said.
Subjects in the low-fit group did less than the minimum 30 minutes a
day, he said.
Findings of the study were published in The Journal of the American
Medical Association, based in Chicago.
The study "drives home a little more fully the notion that sedentary
living and low fitness are really very important predictors of mortality,"
Blair said.
A heart-risk expert not associated with the study agreed.
"If you're fit, you're going to live longer, and you're going to
offset the impact of bad habits, like smoking and risk factors like
hypertension and having a high blood cholesterol level," said Dr.
Fraser Bremmer, head of preventative cardiology at Loyola University
Medical Center in suburban Chicago.
"Being fit seems to offset some of the impact of these (risk factors)),"
he added. "But it's important to emphasize it doesn't cancel them
out. So if you're a smoker, your risk of dying of lung cancer is still
far ahead of the rest of the population who don't smoke."
