Healthy diet leads to higher fitness in middle-aged adults: Study
Diet and Fitness: A nutritious diet is related to higher physical fitness in middle-aged people, suggests a recent study. The findings of the study have been published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).
"This study provides some of the strongest and most rigorous data thus far to support the connection that better diets may lead to higher fitness," study author Dr Michael Mi of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, US, said.
"The improvement in fitness we observed in participants with better diets was similar to the effect of taking 4,000 more steps each day."
Cardiorespiratory fitness assesses the body's ability to distribute and utilise oxygen during exercise, as well as the health of multiple organ systems such as the heart, lungs, blood vessels, and muscles. It is one of the most powerful indicators of health and lifespan. While exercise improves cardiorespiratory fitness, there are differences in fitness among people who exercise the same amount, implying that other factors are at play. A nutritious diet has been related to a number of health benefits, but it is unclear whether it is also linked to fitness.
The goal of this study was to examine if a nutritious diet is associated with physical fitness in people who live in the community.
The Framingham Heart Study includes 2,380 participants with an average age of 54 years and 54% female participants.
Participants underwent a maximal effort cardiopulmonary exercise test on a cycle ergometer to assess peak VO2. This is the gold standard of fitness assessment, representing the amount of oxygen required during the most strenuous activity imaginable.
Participants also completed the Harvard semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire, which assessed dietary intake of 126 items over the previous year, ranging from never or less than once per month to six or more servings per day.
After controlling for age, gender, total daily energy intake, body mass index, smoking status, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, diabetes, and routine physical activity level, the researchers assessed the relationship between diet quality and fitness. The AHEI and MDS averages were 66.7 and 12.4, respectively. An increase of 13 points on the AHEI and 4.7 points on the MDS compared to the average score was related to a 5.2% and 4.5% higher peak VO2, respectively.
"In middle-aged adults, healthy dietary patterns were strongly and favourably associated with fitness even after taking habitual activity levels into account. The relationship was similar in women and men, and more pronounced in those under 54 years of age compared to older adults," Dr Mi said.
The researchers conducted additional analyses to determine the potential mechanism between diet and fitness and examined the relationship between diet quality, fitness and metabolites, which are substances produced during digestion and released into the blood during exercise.
In blood samples collected from a subset of 1,154 study participants, a total of 201 metabolites (e.g., amino acids) were analysed. After controlling for the same parameters addressed in earlier analyses, 24 metabolites were related to either poor diet and fitness or good diet and fitness.
"Our metabolite data suggest that eating healthily is associated with better metabolic health, which could be one possible way that it leads to improved fitness and ability to exercise."
- ANI
