Running novices that trained for six months and then ran their first marathon actually reversed the aging of major blood vessels—and older and slower people benefitted most, report researchers at University College London. The study of 139 healthy first-time marathon runners, ages 21 to 69, was presented at the 2019 European Society of Cardiology Congress. It found that those first-timers reduced their arterial age by four years and their stroke risk by 10 percent over their lifetime.

In another study presented at the Congress that was based on data from 605 heart failure patients, researchers reported that those walking the farthest in a six-minute test, indicating better fitness, were significantly less likely to have the cognitive impairment that afflicts 67 percent of patients with heart failure.

This article appears in the August 2019 issue of Natural Awakenings.