Is Exercise Variety a Necessity for Longevity?

By Kevin Kolodziejski 

To exercise, or not to exercise: that is not the question.

For no matter your views on Shakespeare (or writers who glibly reference his work), exercise is unquestionably good for you. In fact, according to another, albeit lesser man of letters, it’s the answer to longer life. In “Outlive: The Science of Art and Longevity,” scholar and doctor Peter Attia calls exercise “the most potent longevity ‘drug’ in our arsenal, in terms of lifespan and healthspan.” He does so because “the data are unambiguous: exercise not only delays actual death but also prevents both cognitive and physical decline, better than any other intervention.”

But does one specific type of exercise delay death better than others?

Now that’s a question worthy of Hamlet’s and your deepest contemplation. It’s also the question that’s the impetus of a study published by BMJ Medicine online in January.

The Study About Exercise Variety and Longevity

Researchers at Harvard University and the Chongqing Medical University in Chongqing, China took another look at the data accrued on about 110,000 health professionals who took part in either the Nurses’ Health Study or the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study. They focused on the responses to the questions the participants were asked an average of 13 times over roughly 30 years about exercise and found what they expected to find. That when it comes to exercise, it’s generally a matter of more being better — but only up to a point.

A point, surprisingly, that really doesn’t take all that much time to reach with moderate effort, when the MET hour measurements used in the study are translated into layman’s terms.

A lowered risk of death, for instance, leveled off for typical weight trainers after performing about 120 minutes of exercise per week. For 10-minute-per-mile joggers, it occurred after 65 minutes.  The plateau for bicyclists wasn’t as clear. In the Nurses’ Health Study, it happened after riding 75 minutes at about 13 miles per hour, though it took longer in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study.

But when the researchers considered the participants’ degree of exercise variety by creating a “physical activity variety score,” a far-less-expected finding emerged.

The Less-Than-Expected Finding

When compared to those who scored in the bottom fourth, those who scored in the top fourth had a 13 percent lower mortality rate for cardiovascular disease, cancer, and respiratory disease, and their all-cause mortality rate was 19 percent lower. In other words, you get more bang for your exercise longevity buck by mixing it up. Or in the words Zeeshan Khan, MD, chief of geriatrics at Hackensack Meridian Jersey Shore University Medical Center in New Jersey, “[Exercise] variety is just as important as volume.”

Khan utters those words when assessing the BMJ study for Medical News Today, and while they are true, so too is the fact that importance is not the same as necessity. Ergo, they fail to answer the question posed in today’s title: “Is Exercise Variety a Necessity for Longevity?” That’s a question, however, that can never be definitively answered, and, truth be told, I knew as much before posing it. But asking it is not a cheap trick to pique reader interest, but rather evidence of the absolutely awesome power of the mind.

In that power you’ll find an answer that works for you. And in the following study, you’ll see just how that is true.

Evidence of the Absolutely Awesome Power of the Mind

The study was published by Psychological Science in 2007 and penned primarily by Ali Crum. She’s now a psychology professor at Stanford University who’s so highly regarded that Adam Grant, a psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the bestselling author of five science and psychology books, considers her the “preeminent health psychologist of her generation.”

In what we’ll call the Housekeeper’s study, Crum and colleagues asked 88 housekeepers to rate how much exercise they got on a scale from 1 to 10. One-third — somehow oblivious to the fact that pushing heavy carts, vacuuming, climbing stairs, and cleaning toilets qualifies according to the Surgeon General’s guidelines as exercise — said zero. The average overall score was 3.

The group of housekeepers was then divided in half, and both halves were instructed not to change anything at all in their lives, including their afterwork physical activities and eating pattern. But one half was taken to school, in a manner of speaking. They attended several presentations where the key takeaway was always the same. That housekeeping duties qualify as exercise, and that a typical housekeeper’s workweek easily exceeds the Surgeon General’s suggested amount of exercise.

Four Weeks Later

Four weeks later, all the health tests performed on the housekeepers at the start of the study were performed again. The women who had attended the presentations and now believed their work doubled as exercise had — without any increase in physical activity or decrease in calories — lost weight, improved their hip-to-waist ratio, and lowered systolic blood pressure by an average of 10 points.

Just as importantly, Crum tells Andrew Huberman when she spoke about the study on the scientist-turned-social-influencer’s podcast, the housekeepers started feeling better about themselves.  Which I can only assume is one of the reasons why you ride a bike.

So if you’ve ever felt bad because you’re doing so much cycling that you may be shortchanging other forms of exercise, don’t. Take heart in the Housekeeper’s study instead.

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Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.

A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.