Best Health Wants To Help You…. Live Longer

And we’ve got the secret weapon to help you achieve that. Exercise. Research shows regular activity can stave o heart disease, obesity, diabetes and more. Here’s your decade-by-decade guide to getting started.

- Lara Ceroni

Age is just a number:

That’s an old adage, sure, but one that seems more relevant today than ever before. Canadians are living longer: Statistics Canada cites that Canadians lived an average of 81.7 years in 2011 – an increase of 24.6 years since 1921 (79 years for men and 83 for women). The good news is, these statistics continue to rise.

We have medical advances, pharmaceutical research and access to public health care to thank for these extra years, but another secret weapon we can add to our “living longer” arsenal is an often overlooked one: exercise. Research shows that regular physical activity can reduce inflammation in the body that comes with aging, which can also help decrease our risk of developing related diseases and conditions, such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes and loss of muscle mass.

This is promising news for all of us, but there is a catch: How we work out should vary decade by decade, and to really take advantage of being healthy and staying active longer requires that we pay attention to different key exercise methods at each life stage. Here, we’ve rounded up industry experts to share their suggestions on how to exercise at every age.

30s Muscle

THE CHALLENGE