How Much Does Fitness Add to Your Lifespan?

In one of the largest studies of its kind, researchers followed more than 122,000 adults who had taken a treadmill fitness test, tracking who died over the years that followed. Higher measured fitness was linked to a lower risk of dying, and remarkably the benefit kept climbing with no upper limit, so the fittest had the lowest mortality of all. Being in the lowest fitness group carried a risk of early death comparable to, or greater than, well-known dangers such as smoking, heart disease and diabetes. Because the people studied had all been referred for a heart test and the design is observational, the exact numbers may not transfer perfectly to everyone, though the direction is clear and consistent. For a woman thinking about the decades ahead, it reframes fitness as one of the strongest modifiable predictors of a long life, and one that responds at any age to regular aerobic effort.