Unleash the Fountain of Youth: Unlocking the Power of Exercise for Longevity

Longevity experts have spent decades seeking for a miraculous medication to delay the aging process. But the greatest solution—at least for now—may be the simplest one: Move more.

No single thing—whether it’s regular cold plunges or off-label drugs and supplements like metformin, rapamycin or taurine—has a track record that can match exercise’s in terms of protecting against age-related diseases and helping people get more from their later years, a vast body of research shows.

The muscular and bone development generated by exercise may help older persons keep their independence, minimize weariness and guard against serious injuries from falls, the biggest cause of injury-related mortality among those over 65.

Regular exercise helps lower the chance of acquiring some age-related disorders, including Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.“It’s really remarkable how many of these different hallmarks of aging exercise can target,” says Nathan LeBrasseur, an exercise and aging researcher and director of the Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging at the Mayo Clinic.

LeBrasseur co-wrote a research in 2021 that demonstrated an organized exercise regimen lowered a crucial hallmark of aging, cell senescence. Senescent cells cease dividing as they age and contribute to many age-related disorders.

How much exercise?

Any level of physical exercise may help lengthen a person’s life, study shows, particularly for individuals who presently are doing very little. Federal standards indicate that individuals obtain at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week.

A team of researchers who studied data on more than 650,000 persons over almost a decade found that, compared with those who were inactive, those who obtained approximately half the government’s recommended physical exercise added an average of 1.8 years to their lives. Those who exercised for around five to eight hours weekly gained an average of 4.2 years.

“When you think about that, in terms of how many years you’re gaining per how many minutes of activity, it’s a very sizable yield,” says Steven C. Moore, the study’s principal author and senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute.

Lifespan benefits continued across age groups, particularly for persons who were classed as overweight. The research, published in 2012 in the journal PLOS Medicine, indicated that people who were active and moderately obese gained nearly three years of life expectancy after age 40 compared with those who were normal weight but sedentary.

More subsequent research studying physical activity and mortality rates has supported up previous conclusions.

Exercise helps prevent aging in a variety of ways, including by enhancing immunological function, lowering inflammation and raising insulin sensitivity, study has revealed.

Beyond the fairway

Tennis enthusiasts, rejoice! Racket sports, like tennis, squash or racquetball, as well as jogging and walking were shown to have the largest advantages in a separate research Moore co-wrote on forms of physical exercise and mortality risk.

Exercise may boost your memory and learning capacity, too. Moderate-intensity exercise is associated to an increase in cerebral blood flow and brain glucose metabolism, which are tied to cognitive abilities, says University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Ozioma Okonkwo, who co-wrote two papers on the issue.

“[Exercise] is one of the few things that the scientific literature is just unequivocal about,” says Dr. Christin Glorioso, a neurologist and co-founder of longevity biotech business NeuroAge Therapeutics.

Glorioso, whose business is seeking to uncover a medicine that may cure neurodegenerative illnesses, runs, hikes and occasionally swims in the San Francisco Bay near her house. The activity is partially to attempt to avoid Alzheimer’s disease that runs in her family, she adds.

Theory, meet practice

Many self-described biohackers—those driven to experimental lifestyle modifications and drugs like metformin and rapamycin to attempt to create longer, healthier lives—count exercise as the most significant weapon in their armory.

Rich Porter, a 42-year-old IT entrepreneur, this past year boosted his exercise program from what he describes as nonexistent to an hour every day, rotating between cardio and weight training. His interest in longevity began around a year ago when he started addressing wrinkles with Botox injections.“I thought, that’s really just a superficial solution to a superficial problem and there’s actually something larger that I need to be looking at,” Porter says. “I’d like to be able to do the things I love as long as possible, and then hopefully just die.”

Porter encouraged himself to work out by envisioning the things he aspires to be able to accomplish at age 90, such as carrying a carry-on luggage into an airplane’s overhead compartment.

Exercise is always vital, but becomes increasingly crucial around middle age when muscle mass and basal metabolic rate, or the amount of calories the body normally burns at rest, start to diminish, aging experts say.

Doctors and scientists typically advocate following the government standards for duration and intensity of training, including a combination of endurance and strength-training activities. Strength training becomes particularly crucial for persons in later age, adds Mayo Clinic’s LeBrasseur.

Alexander Boldizar, a 51-year-old writer in Vancouver, British Columbia, averages two exercises a day, typically comprising an hour of “zone two,” or moderate, steady cardiovascular activity, followed by an hour and a half of Brazilian jujitsu class.

It’s part of an elaborate longevity program that includes off-label pharmaceuticals like rapamycin and acarbose, a diabetic drug, daily sessions in his home sauna, and a smart bed that measures body movement and heart rate.

“You’ll see a lot of people in the longevity groups that say, ‘Pills are easier,’ but I think that’s a mistake,” adds Boldizar. “I think it’s really important to get the lifestyle stuff down first.”