Here’s good news for older runners!

You’ll have a greater span of active life, fewer disabilities, and less than half the chance of dying an early death as your older counterparts who don’t run.

This information comes from a Stanford University School of Medicine study of 538 older runners that started in 1984 soon after jogging and running became wildly popular.

These runners were all over 50 years old and were compared to a group of nonrunners who were about the same age. The runners ran about 4 hours a week at first, then slowed to about an hour and 15 minutes per week after more than 20 years.

But here’s where the story gets good. After 19 years, the researchers checked to see how many of each group had died.

Here’s What They Found

34% of the nonrunners had died. But only 15% of the runners were dead.

Both groups experienced more disabilities over time, but the runners’ first disability was 16–yes, 16!–years later than the nonrunning group.

And the gap between the 2 groups’ abilities continued to widen over time.

The researchers believe this happened because the runners had healthier lifestyles and leaner bodies than the nonrunners.

The runners also had fewer early deaths from heart disease, cancer, infections, neurological and other diseases.

Surprisingly, runners didn’t have more knee replacements or osteoarthritis than nonrunners.

So the conclusions from this study are obvious: keep exercising to remain healthy longer. Of course, you should never start an exercise program without consulting your doctor.

But aerobic exercise, including running, may just turn out to be your fountain of youth.