By Ken Berger

A large cohort study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine asked a simple question: do people who perform muscle‑strengthening activities actually live longer and stay healthier than people who don’t?

To get a clear answer, the researchers didn’t just look at one group. They pulled together 16 large “cohort” studies, which followed adults over time and tracked their exercise habits and health outcomes. In total, this added up to hundreds of thousands of people.

They focused on muscle‑strengthening activities: things like weight training, bodyweight exercises, resistance bands, or similar work where your muscles are pushing against some kind of load. Then they looked at who developed major diseases and who died over the follow‑up years.

Here’s the key takeaway in plain language:

People who did muscle‑strengthening activities had about a 10–17% lower risk of dying from any cause, and a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, total cancer, diabetes, and lung cancer, compared with people who did none.

In other words, the “strength group” showed up as significantly more protected across several major health problems.

The study also looked at how much strength work seemed to be linked with the best outcomes. When researchers graphed the data, they saw a curve that looked a bit like a “J” for all‑cause death, heart disease, and total cancer. The biggest benefit – roughly a 10–20% lower risk – showed up around 30–60 minutes per week of muscle‑strengthening activity.

For diabetes, the curve looked more like an “L,” with a big drop in risk up to about 60 minutes per week and not much extra benefit beyond that.

The authors also checked what happens when people combine strength work with aerobic activity (like walking or cycling). Those who did both types of movement had an even lower risk of dying from any cause, heart disease, or total cancer than people who did neither.

The study isn’t perfect; most of the data are based on self‑reported exercise, and the overall evidence quality was rated as low. But the signal and message are consistent: Doing some regular strength work, especially around 30–60 minutes per week, is linked with living longer and having less major disease over time.

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