Going for a ten-minute stroll every day can cut the risk of dying early by 15 per cent, research has revealed.
Scientists found that making tiny tweaks to lifestyle in middle age, such as taking the stairs instead of the lift, have a significant impact on helping people live longer.
The study, published in The Lancet, examined data from 135,000 people in the UK, Norway, Sweden and the US, who were mostly aged in their fifties and sixties. They wore pedometers to measure activity levels. Death rates from all causes were compared over an eight-year period.
The study also concluded that even an extra five minutes per day would reduce the general population’s early death rate by 10 per cent. It looked at the impact of “moderate-to–vigorous” activity, which includes brisk walking, mowing the lawn, housework, cycling or swimming.
The research was led by a team at the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences, which also found that reducing the time spent sitting down each day by 30 minutes could cut deaths by about 5 per cent.
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Professor Melody Ding, of the University of Sydney, said: “Inactive lifestyles are associated with a range of health problems and this study shows the huge public health benefit from even small increases in physical activity.”
The participants were aged 64 on average. Deaths before the age of 75 were defined as premature.
Diseases including diabetes, heart disease and cancer are some of the biggest causes of preventable premature deaths and are all linked to sedentary lifestyles. Experts urged Britons to act on the findings by integrating small changes into their days, stressing that “some physical activity will always be better than doing nothing at all”.
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Dr Brendon Stubbs, of King’s College London, said: “This finding offers hope, especially to the least active, serving as an inspiring public health message: even small daily tweaks to activity levels can make a meaningful difference, for instance a quick brisk walk, climbing a few extra flights of stairs, or playing energetically with the grandkids.
“Ultimately this is an observational study, it cannot prove causation. Randomised controlled trials would be ideal to confirm if these changes directly reduce deaths.”
People who had the best sleep, exercised most and had the most healthy diets lived for 9.35 years longer than those with the worst sleep, lowest activity levels and poorest diet
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Dr Daniel Bailey, of Brunel University, said that an extra five minutes a day “should be feasible for most people”, adding: “Moderate activities are those that make us breathe a bit heavier and feel warmer.”
A study, published in eClinicalMedicine, identified a number of small changes to sleep and diet that people could make to extend their lives.
It found that, among people with the unhealthiest lifestyles, a “combined dose” of increasing sleep by five minutes per day, two minutes more exercise and half an extra portion of vegetables could increase a person’s lifespan by one year.
The research was led by academics at the University of Sydney who gathered information on the levels of activity, diet and sleep of 50,000 people taking part in the UK Biobank study. Over the eight years there were 2,400 deaths.
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People who had the best sleep, exercised most and had the most healthy diets lived for 9.35 years longer than those with the worst sleep, lowest activity levels and poorest diets. “This study demonstrates that small, concurrent improvements in sleep, physical activity, and diet quality were associated with clinically meaningful theoretical gains in lifespan and healthspan,” the authors wrote.
The lead researcher, Dr Nicholas Koemel, said: “Sleep, physical activity and nutrition are all factors known to be linked to healthier lives, but they are usually studied in isolation. By investigating these factors in combination, we can see that even small tweaks have a significant cumulative impact over the long-term.”