A study published last week in the Archives of Internal Medicine shows that fitness in middle age gives people a much better chance of staying healthier longer.

This is much better news for those now in their 40s and 50s than it may first appear.

Americans are living longer today, Gretchen Reynolds wrote in Wednesday’s New York Times, but the incidence of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer is also increasing in the nation’s elderly.

Researchers are calling the result a “lengthening of morbidity.” 

“That means we are spending more years living with chronic disease and ill health — not the outcome that most of us would hope for from a prolonged life span,” she observed.

But the new study shows that middle-aged folks who had never exercised much before, can give themselves a good shot at a healthy old age by becoming fit in their 40s and 50s.

The study looked at the health histories of 18,670 middle-aged men and women who had had medical examinations at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas beginning in 1970. Their average age then was 49. They all had taken treadmill tests to determine their aerobic fitness. They were rated in one of five categories depending on their treadmill results. The majority fell into the least-fit group, as do most Americans.

“Then, in a first-of-its-kind data comparison, the researchers checked the same individuals’ Medicare claim records from 1999 through 2009, by which time most of the participants were in their 70s and 80s. What they found was those adults who had been the least fit at the time of their middle-age checkup also were the most likely to have developed any of eight serious or chronic conditions early in the aging process. These include heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and colon or lung cancer.

“The adults who’d been the most fit in their 40s and 50s often developed many of the same conditions, but notably their maladies appeared significantly later in life than for the less fit. Typically, the most aerobically fit people lived with chronic illnesses in the final five years of their lives, instead of the final 10, 15 or even 20 years.

WHAT A GREAT trade-off. Get in decent shape say at 50, and collect your reward at 75, or 80, or 85.

Death comes to everyone eventually. But, as the old joke puts it, I’d like to live to 100 and then be shot by a jealous husband. The Dallas study brings that frivolous wish a tad closer to reality.

Life expectancy today is about 78. That’s up from 74 in 1980. The number of 90-year-olds grows steadily. Living to 100 no longer makes a person a curiosity.

But living long is not the same as living well. 

With a little advance planning, a great many more of the world’s middle-aged men and women can give themselves 10 years or more of good health at the end of their lives, when health becomes of such great importance to the elderly and their families.

As the Dallas study showed clearly, cardiovascular fitness can be achieved by virtually all men and women in their 40s and 50s. Twenty minutes of brisk walking on most days will do it. 

Jogging and sensible weight lifting will boost a person into the top ranks of the fit within a year of regular exercise for perhaps an hour a session, three to four days a week. 

The physicians who conducted the Dallas study concluded that living healthier, longer, was the primary payoff for getting up from the couch at mid-life. Maybe. But fitness makes life more productive and enjoyable for everyone at whatever age. The payoff is immediate as well as long-term. Try it. It makes living more fun.

— Emerson Lynn, jr.

Are Kansans better off today than they were in 2008? 

That question, multiplied by 49, seems to be key to November’s election results, according to the pundits.

Since the answer must be in dollars and cents, given the materialistic nature of the query, the answer must be yes. The biggest industry in our state is agriculture. Commodity prices marched steadily upward over the past four years. Farming hasn’t been so rewarding for decades. 

If the subject is state government, taxes have rarely been lower or state balances much higher. Gov. Sam Brownback felt comfortable signing the largest tax cut in Kansas history because the state was in the black again after three years of recession-induced revenue shortfalls. (The tax cuts were far too great and will have to be revisited, but that’s another issue.) 

The Kansas economy was recovering nicely until this year’s drought hit. The unemployment rate has been about 25 percent below the national rate. The housing crisis skipped Kansas families. Because there never was a housing boom in most Kansas communities, there wasn’t a bust.

This said, a more pertinent question to ask would be whether today’s parents think their children will be better off than they are. In other words, is the outlook for the future bright or gloomy?

The thoughtful answer is both. 

It is bright because people keep getting smarter, which makes them more able to tackle tough problems and solve them. The progress made — and being made every day — in medical science is truly astounding. Our mastery of technology was demonstrated just a few days ago by the flawless landing of Curiosity on Mars. That car-size mobile laboratory will be sending information about the red planet to scientists on Earth for weeks, maybe years: an astounding feat. 

Progress in other areas, such as human rights, moves forward haltingly, falls back, then jerks forward another inch or two. People of a certain age, however, can celebrate the world’s great powers haven’t gone to war with each other for half a century, that atomic weapons haven’t been used since World War II, that the number of people living in democracies keeps increasing, and that the poverty rate in the world’s two largest countries, China and India, has dropped dramatically.

The immediate future in the world’s rich nations is clouded because of debt. Because people in this country, and in almost every other democracy, have demanded more from government than they were willing to pay for, government spending now must be cut back to make payments on the debt this imbalance created. And because the world is bound together with a myriad of economic shackles, what hurts Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, sends shivers of pain through the other national economies. 

STILL A THIRD question should be asked: Do you believe the president of the United States (1) caused the recession and (2) can create a prosperous nation in a debt-ridden world acting alone?

Thoughtful Americans will answer “of course not” to both of these propositions. The recession of 2008 was well on its way when Barack Obama took office. The debt crisis that still holds Europe in its grip was not caused by any action in Washington, D.C. The United States cannot rebuild world prosperity unilaterally; neither will the U.S. economy recover fully until Europe and Asia also thrive. This is, as America’s Wendell Willkie famously observed in 1940, One World.

The challenge America’s next president faces is to work steadily and wisely with leaders in the rest of the world to stimulate growth while reducing debt. He will move toward that goal faster if he can disarm the belligerent radicals in America’s political parties. 

Americans can do miracles when they work together. Come next January, we should try.

— Emerson Lynn, jr.