Every Hour of Running Helps You Earn 7 Hours of Life, According to Science

The oldest marathon finisher, Fauja Singh, was 101 years old when he finished a 6.25-mile run in 1 hour and 32 minutes! Running doesn’t only help you lose unwanted weight and get you in better shape, but it can also add more years to your life. There are some people who love doing it, but even if you’re one of those who really, really doesn’t — you still should, because the benefits it carries are incredible.

Bright Side is all about a healthy and active lifestyle, so this is why we want to explain why running is so good for us.

Running can prolong your life.

A study published 8 years ago showed that people who ran as little as 5 minutes a day still had a prolonged life, and it was also proven that this exercise reduces the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and all other causes.

In that research, it was proven that runners had 30% and 45% lower adjusted risks of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, respectively, as well as a 3-year life expectancy benefit.

Running reduces the risk of life-threatening events.

Some more research with a total of 230,000 participants showed that people who are runners have a 27% lower risk of dying. In more detail, those who run have a 30% less chance of dying from heart disease and 23% from cancer. The research also discovered that it doesn’t matter how many times or how long someone runs per week. Once a week or 50 minutes per week are enough to boost your health and metabolism.

This study even goes as far to claim that 1 hour of running per week can increase your life expectancy by 7 hours. And activities such as cycling might also be beneficial for people’s well-being, but they cannot be compared to the properties of running.

Running should be combined with a healthy lifestyle.

However, it’s important to note that the findings in this study are associational, meaning that the people who run are people who tend to live longer, not that running directly causes a longer life span. It does help greatly though.

Exercising has to be taken seriously because, according to a medical study published in The Lancet, inactivity is very dangerous as it causes 1 in 10 demises worldwide. Of course, being active in itself isn’t enough for a truly healthy and long life, people who also eat right will reap the most benefits.

BONUS: Here are some great examples of how running changes lives.

1.

Running changed this woman’s life. She went from 313 lb to 178 lb.

2.

243 lbs to 145 lbs. The picture on the left is her doing her first 5k marathon, which took her 37 minutes and on the right, this is her 17 months later, completing a 21k marathon in 1 hour and 51 minutes.

Are you going to try to include running more in your lifestyle after reading this article? Share it with us and let’s all motivate each other together.