Physical exercise can increase your life expectancy by three years and decrease your risk of death by 14 percent, a new study suggests.
Recommendations call for adults to do at least a total of one and a half hours of physical activity daily, though the new study shows that even half of that, 15 minutes daily, still provides benefits.
The study followed over 400,000 people in Taiwan who were followed for an average of eight years. Based on self-reported amounts of weekly exercise, they fit into one of five categories: inactive, low, medium, high, or very high.
Those in the low-activity group were active for an average of just under 15 minutes a day. When compared to those in the inactive group, or those who did almost no physical activity, the low-activity group was 14 percent less likely to die from any cause, 10 percent less likely to die of cancer, and had a three-year longer life expectancy on average.
Each additional 15 minutes of daily exercise beyond the minimum 15 minutes further reduced the risk of all-cause death by four percent and the risk of cancer death by one percent.
"The knowledge that as little as 15 minutes per day of exercise on most days of the week can substantially reduce an individual's risk of dying could encourage many more individuals to incorporate a small amount of physical activity into their busy lives," Dr. Anil Nigam and Dr. Martin Juneau, of the Montreal Heart Institute and the Universite de Montreal in Quebec, wrote in an editorial accompanying the study.
