Lift Weights, Live Longer

Strength training doesn’t just make you stronger: it may make you live longer. How do we know? Because researchers at Penn State studied the mortality effects of strength training on more than 30,000 people who were over 65 between 1997-2001. A Penn State news release reports that only 9 percent of that cohort met strength training guidelines issued by the American College of Sports Medicine, but that 9 percent enjoyed longer lives than those who didn’t. Ready? The envelope please….the researchers found that older adults who strength trained at least twice a week had 46 percent lower odds of death for any reason than those who did not. They also had 41 percent lower odds of cardiac death and 19 percent lower odds of dying from cancer.