A new study shows that running on a regular basis can improve life’s condition and slow down the effects of ageing. Running is also very important to people already old as joggers seemed to be half predisposed to die of cancer than the non-runners.

The elder runners enjoy a healthier life and little disabilities, as the team at the Stanford University Medical Center discovered. The new discovery has improved the life rhythm of the older people as they have to exercise regularly.

For more than 20 years, researchers tracked 500 runners and compared them with a smaller group of non-runners and they were all in their 50s at the start of this study. 34% of the non-runners had died since then and only 15% of the runners passed away.

Of course that for both groups the effects of ageing made their appearance but the difference was that for the runners these disabilities appeared 16 years later than for the non-runners.

As the study shows, running slows down the rate of heart attacks and artery related diseases and deaths. Even if researchers were afraid that the older runners could suffer osteoarthritis there was no evidence they suffered of this more than the non-runners.

"The study has a very pro-exercise message. If you had to pick one thing to make people healthier as they age, it would be aerobic exercise,” Professor James Fries, lead author from the University of California at Stanford, explained.