A few minutes of strength training a week may lengthen your life

For years, aerobic exercise has been promoted as essential for staying healthy or becoming healthier. Now, researchers have shown that adding a few minutes each week of strength training – also called muscle-building exercise – can cut your risk of disease and death.

“The benefit is more for the elderly,” said Arash Tadbiri, MD, a Bourne primary care physician, since younger adults are typically in better overall health. “It enhances (older people’s) immune system,” he said, allowing them to better fight off cancers and infectious diseases, including flu and COVID-19, which can be deadlier for older people. 

Two papers published this summer in the British Journal of Sports Medicine show strength training also boosts overall health and lowers risk of death, especially when combined with aerobic exercise. Significant health benefits can be achieved with only 30 minutes-to-three hours a week of aerobic exercise and one or two brief sessions of strength training.

There are numerous, well-documented benefits of aerobic exercise, said Dr. Tadbiri, who practices geriatric and family medicine at Bourne Primary Care. Aerobic exercise improves overall health and cardiovascular health, lowers cholesterol and blood sugar levels, enhances the immune system and elevates mood. Combined with weight training, the benefits multiply, he said.

Exercise totals can be broken into several smaller sessions, he explained.

“Ten minutes – it’s short,” he said. “There’s no excuse to say, ‘I cannot do that.’”

The Research

Research teams for the two papers pored over large amounts of data, looking to establish the amount of exercise or dosage needed to obtain significant reduction in the risk of dying from any cause. One paper, published in July, with a corresponding author at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine in Sendai, Miyagi, Japan, analyzed 16 studies from 2012-2020, most of which were from the United States, but also included some from England, Scotland, Australia and Japan. The number of subjects in each study ranged from approximately 3,800 to almost 480,000.

The analysis found 30-60 minutes of strength training weekly lowered the risk of dying from any cause by 10-17 percent. It lowered the risk, by the same amount, of developing cardiovascular disease, diabetes, all types of cancer considered together, and lung cancer, specifically. The authors said previous research had shown strength training reduced the risk of death from all causes, but the dosage was unknown.

The second paper, published in August 2022, with the corresponding author at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, used data on more than 4.16 million Americans from the National Health Interview Survey (1997-2014) and the National Death Index (through 2015). It found that compared to people who didn’t do any aerobic exercise, those who performed it one hour weekly had 15 percent lower risk of death, with the benefit levelling off after three hours weekly. Adding strength training further cut death risk, with the best results (an extra 11 percent) with one or two sessions weekly, and with the benefit disappearing at seven times weekly.

The researchers for the Utah paper wrote that some evidence indicated aerobic activity’s reduction of mortality risk may be greater for older people and it may continue beyond three hours of weekly exercise. They also concluded that muscle-strengthening exercise done one to two times weekly without any aerobic exercise still substantially reduced the risk of death.

What It Means

“This is good news for people who cannot do aerobic exercise,” Dr. Tadbiri said. Even if disabled or frail, they can still do some mild strength training, such as using elastic resistance bands,” he said. Aerobic exercise need not be hard-core workouts to be effective, he added.

“I usually tell my patients to pick an enjoyable exercise, so they can go back to it again,” he said. “For example, dancing is an enjoyable, moderate exercise, but can be vigorous.”

For those concerned that exercise may injure tendons, Dr. Tadbiri said regular exercise can have an anti-inflammatory effect. The Utah paper said muscle-building exercise improves older people’s ability to function and various forms may be easier to do than aerobic exercise – especially for those who are overweight or obese.

“Any activity is better than none,” Dr. Tadbiri said, noting he can now cite these two studies when telling patients about the extra benefit of doing a little strength training.