Want to add another decade to your life?
You need not embark on a complex daily fitness regime — simply go for plenty of long walks, Australian researchers say.
Scientists found that those who walked for 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 being stationary for too much of the day raises the risk of numerous health problems including weight gain, type 2 diabetes, cancer and even an early grave.
Now the team from Griffith University in Queensland, say they should aim for enough walking time to match the levels of the top 25 per cent most physically active people.
Dr Lennert Veerman, a professor of public health at Griffith University and study co-author said: ‘I was surprised to find that the loss of life years due to low levels of physical activity might rival the losses due to smoking and high blood pressure.
‘I wondered how that would translate to life expectancy, and how much extra life time walking might bring.’
In the study, researchers assessed the physical activity levels of over 36,000 US adults aged 40 and over.
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 into the equivalent in walking minutes, to make the comparison between groups easier to interpret.
This was then compared against 2017 mortality data logged 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.
The scientists found the least active quarter were doing the equivalent of 50 minutes of walking per day.
The next group walked for roughly 80 minutes while the third logged around 110 minutes.
The most active quarter of the population recorded the equivalent of 160 minutes —nearly three hours — of walking per day.
Being among the least active quarter would lead to a 5.8-year loss in life expectancy, bringing it down 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 were to complete an extra 111 minutes of activity per day, they could prolong their life by up to 11 years, the reseachers theorised.
Writing in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the researchers said: ‘Our findings suggest that [physical activity] provides substantially larger health benefits than previously thought.’
They acknowledged the study was merely observational and could not prove why walking for longer periods of time could increase life expectancy.
The paper also had some ‘limitations’, they said, including the fact physical activity levels were self-reported.
But they added: ‘Infrastructure measures that encourage active transport, walkable neighbourhoods, as well as green spaces might be promising approaches to increase physical activity and resultant healthy life expectancy at the population level.’
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends adults get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week — or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise.
Sedentary lifestyles in the UK, with Brits spending their workhours deskbound, then sitting in a train or car on their way home to sit down in front of the TV, have been estimated to kill thousands each year.
One 2019 estimate put the annual death toll at 70,000 people a year with the health issues caused costing the NHS £700million each year to treat.
A US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study in 2018 estimated almost one in 10 (8.3 per cent) of adult deaths in the country were caused by physical inactivity.
The WHO puts the annual global death toll from physical inactivity at around 2million per year, making it in the running to be among the top 10 leading causes of global death and disability.
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