Attention all analytical minds! The following information is for you to dissect and for others to draw motivation from. The CDC is a numbers wonderland, full of health related studies and statistics. Diving into physical activity and mortality is the plan this month. We will temporarily put aside all the “exercise makes you feel better” benefits of physical activity.

Physical activity literally improves your ability to stay alive. It is human nature to stay alive. No matter your physical fitness level, it’s safe to say that staying alive is ingrained in all of us (and the song is not too shabby either). The CDC has an initiative called Active People, Healthy Nation. This initiative encompasses all things good about physical activity, strategies to improve nationwide participation, and the goals of the initiative. Data is collected to monitor progress (or regress) via two main surveys, the National Health Interview Survey and the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. More information about Active People, Healthy Nation and both of these surveys is easily found on the CDC website. Let’s dig into some numbers.

Step It Up: In 2020 the National Cancer Institute and National Institute on Aging released a study that links a higher daily step count with lower mortality risk from all causes. The reason why this study is unique is that it did not focus on a specific, narrow demographic. There have been other step studies conducted for a smaller age group or those with specific health conditions or disease. This step study tracked 4,800 adults age 40 and up from all walks of life. Three daily step thresholds were used to define the results (4000, 8000, and 12000). 4000 steps is considered a low number for adults. 8,000 steps resulted in a 51% lower risk for all-cause mortality. 12,000 steps resulted in a 65% lower risk. On top of that there was no association between step intensity and risk of death after accounting for total number of steps. So, in this case, it did not matter how high the exertion level was. It only mattered that the participants moved to see lower risk. If the specific act of walking is not your thing, no problem. There are plenty of health and fitness applications that will convert your entered activities and assign a number of steps to the activity. Improving your chance to simply survive by 51% and 65%, respectively is as simple as averaging 8,000 or 12,000 steps per day.

CDC Article

Strength In Numbers: More research released in 2020 focused on strength activity and mortality. This was a little less straightforward than the steps per day study. For you analytical folks out there, reading the research methods might tempt you to poke holes in the findings, but here is a quick summary of the methods and conclusions.

• This was an analysis of a previous study of over 72,000 men and women free of major chronic disease. The 13 year mortality rate follow up of this group was used.
• The study associated muscle-strengthening activity (MSA) with mortality using three intervals of MSA (Less than 1 hr/wk, 1-2 hrs/wk, and more than 2 hrs/wk). After throwing in some fancy analytics to account for potential error and chance, the researchers compared these intervals to the group’s mortality rate.
• The conclusion was that when compared to no MSA, 2 hours or less of MSA per week lowered all-cause mortality rate, independent of aerobic activity. Participating in more than 2 hours per week, however, did not lower risk.

The take away from this is that performing regular strength activity (only 2 hours or less per week) will lower risk of all-cause mortality, even if it is not associated with aerobic activity. This, potentially, means the chance of staying alive improves even more when combining regular strength and aerobic activities.

CDC Article

The two studies referenced this month are not to make you feel bad about not getting your steps in on a particular day or regularly hitting the gym to pump some iron. The whole point of using these studies is to illustrate the simple message that being active and moving will improve your ability to live. Living is how we are able to experience things. Why not get the most experiences from life by improving our chances of staying alive?