The expression “run for your life” could have new and more serious meanings as a study carried out by the Stanford University School of Medicine showed that regular runing (jogging) slows the aging process and its effects.

The study involved more than 500 older runners and their health and activities were monitored for about 20 years. Those who carried out the study found out that the older runners are less likely to have disabilities, are more active when they reach their 70s and 80s and have 50 per cent less chances than non-runners to die early deaths.

James Fries, MD, the study’s senior author said in a press conference that if he would have to pick one thing which makes people healthier it would be “aerobic exercise." There’s “nothing magic about running per se,” but the regular physical vigorous activity does the trick in every case.

538 runners above 50 were monitored and compared to another group of 423 non-runners. The runners were picked from a nationwide running club. The partakers, now in their 70s and 80s, answered surveys about their every-day activities such as walking, dressing, getting out of a chair and other similar doings. All runners and non-runners involved in the study had similar social and economic backgrounds.

Death records of those who died during the study were used to find out in what conditions and why they had passed away. After almost 19 years since the study had begun, 34% of the non-runners had died, while only 15% of the runners, Dr. Eliza Chakravarty and other doctors involved in the study wrote in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Regular running reduces the risk of heart disease, cancer, as well as neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, the study showed.

However, 21 years into the study, everyone became more disabled, but the runners reached the onset of disability later. The runners exercised about 200 minutes each week, while the non-runners exercised only 20 minutes over the same period.

"Members of the running groups had significantly lower mean disability levels at all time points," the doctors wrote in the study report. Although all of the runners stopped running in their 70s, they didn’t stopped exercising. The majority continued doing some “vigorous exercise," Fries said.