What age should you start to worry about your health?

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When we are younger we kind of take our health for granted. As we get older we start to get more worried about risks to our health, and often we make changes to try to improve our health as we get older.

A recent study that followed 3,500 women and 16,000 men for more than 20 years looking at their cardiovascular fitness. This was measured as the maximal amount of exercise that could be performed using a stress test.

The bad news is that this study shows that our cardiovascular fitness starts to drop at an accelerating rate around age 45. This is likely to be earlier in smokers or those overweight. As our fitness drops this is associated with an increase in serious disease including high blood pressure, coronary disease and cancer.

The good news is that we can keep our cardiovacular fitness beyond this time if we keep ourselves active. This study defined activity mainly as walking or running and found an effect with walking or running 10 miles or so a week.

This study shows that it is increasingly important for those of us aged 40 and above to ensure that some exercise is part of our lives if we want to stay healthy enough to enjoy our later years to the maximum. The good news is that an age related decline in our fitness is not inevitable if we keep ourselves active.

Arch Intern Med 2009; 169(19) 1781-1787.