10 Minutes of Extra Exercise a Day May Help Us Live Longer
Doing just 10 extra minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise every day could help you live longer, according to a new US study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
Researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to study nearly 5,000 US adults between the ages of 40 and 85 to find out if small increases in their physical activity levels prevented deaths.
They looked at data from participants who joined the survey between 2003 and 2006 and had worn an activity monitor for seven days. The researchers used this activity data to group the participants according to how many minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity they did on each of the days. They then checked each person's name against national death records until the end of 2015 to determine the mortality risks for each activity level.
The researchers found that the participants' risk of dying decreased as their physical activity levels increased.
Increasing the amount of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity every day by just 10 minutes was associated with an almost 7% fall in annual deaths.
Increasing physical activity by 20 minutes per day was associated with a 13% fall in annual deaths, and a 30-minute increase was associated with an almost 17% fall.
The researchers estimated that if US adults over 40 increased the amount of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity they did each day by a small amount — even just 10 minutes — it may prevent 110,000 deaths a year.
According to the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, moderate exercise is defined as an activity that's fast or strenuous enough to burn three to six times more energy per minute than if you're sitting quietly. This includes fast walking, leisurely bike rides and doubles tennis.
Meanwhile, vigorous exercise burns more than six times more energy per minute than sitting, and includes sports like hiking, running, soccer and singles tennis.
"We know exercise is good for us," the study's first author Pedro Saint-Maurice told CNN. "This study provides additional evidence of the benefits at the population level."
