Jogging, at a slow to moderate pace for less than three hours per week may extend your life according to a new study performed by the Copenhagen City Heart Study. The research, led by Peter Schnohr looked at the mortality rates between joggers and non-joggers in a study that stretched out over three decades. Schnohr, a Chief Cardiologist used key definitions to determine frequency and intensity of the joggers.

The study used several thousand participants including more than one thousand male joggers and seven hundred female joggers. Each of the participants were asked a number of questions including about the time they spent jogging, how slowly or quickly they jogged when they went and how they felt while they were jogging. Then the researchers compared the overall mortality rates of the jogging group versus those who did not jog at all. In the course of the thirty five years, more than ten thousand of the non-jogging group had died while only one hundred and twenty of the joggers had died.

According to the researchers the optimum time of jogging was roughly two and a half hours each week- more than that or less than an hour each week was associated with a higher death rate. In addition, researchers fournd that a slow to moderate pace was key to making the jogging safe and healthy. Overly extreme exercise often leads to an increase in cortisol, a stress hormone which can lead to excess weight in the stomach area.

Jogging, often dismissed as damaging to the knees is an achievable exercise goal with a little bit of planning. First, it should be started slowly with a completely realistic approach. Those who are going from being completely sedentary should start slowly, trying to increase their time spend walking and adding small bursts of running as they do so. Eventually the jogging should be taking up more of the time than the walking.

A slow to moderate pace means that you are breathless but not completely out of breath. Experts recommend using the rate of perceived exertion chart to make sure that you are jogging at the right pace. Another way to determine if you are on pace is the singing or speaking test. If you can easily say or sing a line of a song, you are not working hard enough and should aim to pick up the pace. If you can barely gasp out a word or two then you are working too hard and should try to pull back a little.