- To live long and healthy, there are several lifestyle changes people can make to potentially extend their life, such as moving more.
- A new study found that moving just an extra 5 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each day could prevent as much as 6% of deaths among those who are the least active.
- Scientists also found that sitting 30 minutes less a day could prevent as much as 7% of deaths.
To live long and healthy, studies suggest there are several lifestyle changes people can make to potentially extend their life.
Not smoking, drinking less alcohol,
Now a new study published in the journal The Lancet found tha just an extra 5 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity each day, or sitting 30 minutes less per day, could help prevent as much as 10% of deaths.
For this study, researchers analyzed health data from previous studies, encompassing more than 150,000 adult participants from the United States, Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom. All selected studies included physical activity data collected through the use of devices.
“We and many others have shown that higher levels of physical activity is beneficially associated with numerous health outcomes, quality of life and lower risk for premature mortality,” Ulf Ekelund, PhD, professor at the Oslo Research Centre for Physical Activity and Population Health in the Department of Sports Medicine at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Norway, and principal investigator of this study, told Medical News Today.
“However, it is unclear how small changes in physical activity and sedentary time might prevent the number of deaths in the population, given that all individuals increase their activity levels,” Ekelund pointed out.
At the study’s conclusion, the researcher said that adding in an extra 5 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity a day lowered the number of all deaths by 6% in the least active 20% of participants during an average 8-year follow-up.
“It means that in a population where 100,000 individuals die every year, 6,000 of these might be preventable by a five-minute increase in activity in the least active 20%,” he added.
When researchers applied the 5-minute addition to the entire participant population, the possible prevention of deaths rose to 10%.
Researchers also examined how sitting less each day might help prevent deaths. They found that sitting 30 minutes less a day may prevent about 3% of deaths among the least active, and 7% across the whole participant population.
“If all in the population groups decreased their sitting by 30 minutes, 3,000 and 7,000 deaths might be prevented in a population with 100,000 deaths — this is close to the annual death rate in Sweden,” Ekelund said.
“Small changes in physical activity and sedentary time might have profound health benefits in the population if all in the population adhere to these changes.”
– Ulf Ekelund, PhD
“We plan to examine the effects of small changes in daily steps on the potential number of deaths averted and possibly disease incidents,” he added.
MNT had the opportunity to speak with Alyssa Lombardi, exercise physiologist for the GoodLife Fitness Program at Hartford HealthCare, about this study.
Lombardi, who was not involved in this research, commented that, as an exercise physiologist, her first reaction to the findings was “I love it.”
“Getting people to move their bodies more in hopes it will make their daily activities easier and to help them live a longer and happier life is exactly what I preach every day,” she told us. “Movement is medicine, even just five minutes can really improve someone’s physical and mental state.”
“Using movement as medicine can be a huge benefit for people,” Lombardi continued. “Even more so now as the boom of keeping things more natural is on the rise. More people now than ever are focusing on keeping nutrition natural and there are many people who would rather have lifestyle changes vs taking prescription medications. This research is even more important to back up these society changes.”
“I would love to see a continuation of this study where they compare different forms of exercise on this theory,” Lombardi added. “Such as comparing running vs. Pilates and what could have a stronger outcome.”
MNT also spoke with Bert Mandelbaum, MD, sports medicine specialist and orthopedic surgeon and codirector of the Regenerative Orthobiologic Center at Cedars-Sinai Orthopaedics in Los Angeles, CA, about this study.
Mandelbaum, who was not involved in this research, explained that as we increase our lifespan and improve our healthspan, we are learning that we have what he calls “firmware” overriding our genes, and we’re learning all the “switches” that we could turn on that are part of our adaptive DNA heritage.
“This manuscript really demonstrates the fact that the more you exercise, the more you’re turning on the appropriate switches,” he continued. “And a lot of that has to do with, again, our ancient heritage of being predators. That the better physically fit you are as a predator, the more food you get, the better able you can reproduce, […] and so on.”
Mandelbaum said this also helps improve what he calls “playspan” — when looking at a curved data model, this is the area measured by healthspan on the Y axis and lifespan on the X axis.
“If people are living longer with disease and disability and are far down that Y axis, [that’s] not so good,” he explained. “What we want is a greater area under the curve […] we now call ‘playspan,’ which is measured on the Y [axis] healthspan, which is basically disability-free life, and lifespan is a number of years.”
“So the better we’re able to sustain fitness, the better we’re able to eat, keep our nutrition good, the more load our bodies and our musculoskeletal systems can take, the better we can prevent injury, the further up that curve and the more area under the curve that we have. We call it a better ‘playspan’ or preservation of performance.”
– Bert Mandelbaum, MD
