Two new large studies have confirmed that it doesn't take Olympic-level efforts to harness the life-extending power of exercise. In fact, say the researchers, even just five minutes a day can have a profound impact on your health and longevity.
When it comes to movement and exercise, more will always be better (within reason, of course). But the idea that extensive exercise is the only kind that matters often keeps people from starting in the first place. Because really, who has the time to jog for 90 minutes and spend another 45 minutes lifting weights each day except for, maybe, a handful of Instagram influencers?
Seeking to learn if even just a little bit of movement can impact longevity, a team of international researchers examined the health records of over 135,000 individuals from seven different health studies. Participants were from the UK, Sweden, Norway, and the United States, and follow-up periods with each person averaged eight years.
The researchers found that adding just five minutes a day of moderate physical activity, like walking at about 3 mph (5 km/h), was associated with a 10% decreased mortality rate for the majority of adults. When it came to the least active adults, the extra five minutes was linked to a 6% decreased mortality rate. Upping the extra activity time to 10 minutes boosted the mortality rate decrease to 15% and 9% for average and least-active adults, respectively.
Additionally, the research team found that for the majority of adults, reducing the amount of sedentary time by 30 minutes each day correlated with an approximate 7% reduction in mortality rate. For the most sedentary results, the rate was 3%. And, once again, boosting that time to a one-hour reduction in sedentary time led to a 13% mortality-rate decrease for the majority of adults and a 6% for the least-active among the cohort.
The study detailing these findings was published in the journal The Lancet.
Synergy
For the second study, published in the journal eClinicalMedicine, researchers looked at the combined effects small changes could have on longevity across sleep, diet, and physical activity.
They found that an extra five minutes of sleep, an additional half a serving of vegetables, and two minutes of moderate physical activity a day could theoretically add an extra year of life to those with the worst sleep, eating, and exercise habits.
To reach their conclusion, the team looked at nearly 60,000 people recruited between 2006-2010 for participation in the UK Biobank. They too, were followed for an average of eight years. The researchers say this is the first study to quantify the minimum combined improvements in diet, sleep and exercise to extend life.
In addition to the benefits for those at the bottom of the cohort in terms of sleep, eating, and exercise habits, the study also says that strong practices in each of these areas could lead to an even more dramatic extension of life. The researchers linked an additional 9+ years of lifespan to those who ate well and got seven-to-eight hours of sleep and over 40 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity each day.
Key to the research is the synergistic effect of diet, sleep, and exercise. For example, say the researchers, for those with the worst levels of each, it would take five times the amount of sleep alone to realize the one-year extension in life.
As with all studies of this sort, the researchers caution that, while their work established a link between behaviors and longevity, they don't necessarily point to causality.
Source: Rachel McDonald, Australian Science Media Center via Scimex
