Do you want to add another decade to your life?
There’s no need to embark on a complex daily exercise regimen – just take plenty of long walks, say Australian researchers.
Scientists found that those who walked a total of 111 minutes per day, on average, lived 11 years longer than people who walked very little.
Experts have warned for years that staying still for much of the day increases the risk of numerous health problems, including weight gain, type 2 diabetes, cancer and even premature death.
Now, the team at Griffith University in Queensland say they should aim to walk long enough to match the levels of the 25 per cent of the most physically active people.
Dr Lennert Veerman, professor of public health at Griffith University and co-author of the study, said: “I was surprised to find that the loss of years of life due to low levels of physical activity could rival the losses due to smoking and high blood pressure.”
“I was wondering how that would translate to life expectancy and how much extra life walking could bring.”
In the study, researchers assessed the physical activity levels of more than 36,000 American adults ages 40 and older.
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This data was captured by health trackers worn for at least 10 hours, over four or more days.
The researchers translated all forms of moderate-to-vigorous exercise to the equivalent in minutes of walking, to make the comparison between groups easier to interpret.
This was then compared to 2017 mortality data recorded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to HELP predict how many people would survive in the coming years, based on their activity levels.
Scientists found that the least active quarter walked the equivalent of 50 minutes a day.
The next group walked for about 80 minutes, while the third clocked in at around 110 minutes.
The most active quarter of the population recorded the equivalent of 160 minutes (almost three hours) of walking per day.
Being among the least active quarterwill cause a loss of 5.8 years in life expectancy, reducing it from around 78 to around 73, they added.
By comparison, if all Americans over age 40 were as active as the top quarter, life expectancy would be 84 years, an increase of 5.3 years.
Therefore, if the least physically active group completed an additional 111 minutes of activity per day, they could extend their life by up to 11 years, the researchers theorized.
writing in the British Journal of Sports MedicineThe researchers said: “Our findings suggest that (physical activity) provides substantially greater health benefits than previously thought.”
They acknowledged that the study was purely observational and could not demonstrate why walking for longer periods would increase life expectancy.
The newspaper also had some ‘limitations,” they said, including the fact that physical activity levels were self-reported.
but they He added: “Infrastructure measures that encourage active transportation, walkable neighborhoods and green spaces could be promising approaches to increasing physical activity and subsequent healthy life expectancy at the population level.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that adults get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise.
Sedentary lifestyles in the UK, in which Britons spend their working hours sitting at a desk and then sitting on a train or car on the way home to sit in front of the TV, are estimated to kill thousands of people each year.
A 2019 estimate puts the annual death toll at 70,000 people a year and the health problems caused cost the NHS £700 million each year to treat.
A 2018 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study estimated that nearly one in 10 (8.3 percent) of adult deaths in the country were caused by physical inactivity.
The WHO puts the annual global death toll from physical inactivity at around 2 million per year, placing it among the top 10 causes of death and disability globally.