ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 17, 1996 TAG: 9607170056
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: Associated Press
NOTE: Below
Being physically fit is such a powerful force for health that even smokers with high blood pressure and high cholesterol who are in good aerobic shape tend to live longer than nonsmoking couch potatoes who are otherwise healthy, a study found.
``Low fitness, which of course is caused primarily by a sedentary way of life, is really a very important risk factor'' for early death, said lead author Steven N. Blair, director of research for the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas.
His team studied 25,341 men and 7,080 women who received physicals at the clinic between 1970 and 1989. After an average of 81/2 years of follow-up, 601 men and 89 women had died.
The one-fifth of men who were least fit, as measured in a treadmill test, were found to be 52 percent more likely to die over the study period than the two-fifths of men who were most fit, the researchers found.
That figure was derived from a statistical analysis that controlled for differences in other traits that affect death risk, such as age and weight, researchers said.
Smokers who are fit and have high blood pressure and high cholesterol still have a 15 percent survival advantage over nonsmokers who are not fit and have high blood pressure or high cholesterol, Blair said.
Similar trends were found among the women.
Subjects in the study who were most fit got more exercise than the minimum recommended by the surgeon general - 30 minutes of accumulated moderate activity daily. That could be by adding jogging or swimming two or three times a week, Blair said.
Subjects in the low-fit group did less than the minimum 30 minutes a day, he said.
Findings of the study were published in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, based in Chicago.
The study is similar to previous research ``but maybe drives home a little more fully the notion that sedentary living and low fitness are really very important predictors of mortality,'' Blair said.
Blair said many physicians still fail to appreciate that.
``I say, when I speak to physicians, if you see a patient and you say, `Well, you don't smoke and your blood pressure and cholesterol are normal - you're at low risk,' I say, `You don't really know that, unless you know something about their fitness, or at very least their physical activity patterns,''' Blair said.
A heart-risk expert not associated with the study agreed.
``If you're fit, you're going to live longer, and you're going to offset the impact of bad habits, like smoking and risk factors like hypertension and having a high blood cholesterol level,'' said Dr. W. Fraser Bremner, head of preventive cardiology at Loyola University Medical Center in suburban Chicago.
``Being fit seems to offset some of the impact of these [risk factors],'' he added. ``But it's important to emphasize it doesn't cancel them out. So if you're a smoker, your risk of dying of lung cancer is still far ahead of the rest of the population who don't smoke.''
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