FITNESS IS THE FUTURE The Cooper Center Longitudinal Study (CCLS) began in 1970 to prove the health benefits of physical activity. In the last 49 years, we have been able to answer critical questions related to fitness, health, and mortality that, along with the book Aerobics, changed the way the world looks at “exercise as medicine.” I have always said that it is much easier to maintain good health than regain it once it is lost. As we enter the 50th anniversary year of The Cooper Institute in June, 2020, we will continue to explore the health benefits of fitness and preventive healthcare.
The CCLS has 115,000 participants with over 320,000 treadmill tests from Cooper Clinic patients who consented for research. The research team has a deep interest in healthy aging. As I have always said, healthy behaviors optimally result in “squaring off the curve.” By that, I mean living well until one dies. We have explored the impact of midlife fitness and found that 20 years later, fitter individuals have less dementia, certain cancers, heart failure hospitalizations, chronic kidney disease, and chronic condition burden. This also led to lower healthcare costs and less healthcare utilization an average of 20 years after the fitness assessment. Being fit is certainly cheaper than treating this myriad of chronic diseases. For the next 50 years, I envision that our team will explore and discover many additional benefits of preventive healthcare on healthy aging. I am especially interested in further understanding the relationship between physical activity, nutrition, and brain health as I know you all are.
Our team will work with our longitudinal study and research partners to explore the lifestyle changes that will lead to good overall health and brain health throughout the lifespan.
Kenneth H. Cooper, MD, MPH Founder and Chairman Emeritus The Cooper Institute
