A new study suggests that the impact of physical inactivity on life expectancy may be substantially larger than previously estimated. The study showed that people over the age of 40 who were as physically active as the most active quarter of the population, could expect to live an extra five years on average.  

More about the study

If you’re one of the many people currently not hitting the minimum exercise recommendations — 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week — then you might be missing out on substantial gains in longevity and healthspan, according to a new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

The study, led by researchers from Griffith University in Australia and various institutions worldwide, challenges previous estimates of physical activity’s benefits, which were largely based on self-reported data.

Researchers analyzed 2017 mortality data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Over 36,000 Americans over age 40 were included, whose physical activity levels were based on data from the 2003 to 2006 National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey. They examined how much physical activity reduced or increased life expectancy.

Researchers translated all forms of moderate to vigorous exercise into the equivalent in walking minutes, to make the comparison between groups easier to interpret.

What did the study find

One of the most interesting results of the study: The 'enormous amount of life expectancy that inactive people can gain', says lead author Lennert Veerman, Professor of Public Health, Griffith University School of Medicine in Queensland, Australia.

If everyone was as active as the top 25 percent of the researched population, Americans over the age of 40 could potentially live an extra 5.3 years on average, raising their life expectancy to around 84-years-old, the study concludes. And if the least active increased their exercise to the most active level, they stood to gain as much as 11 more years of life.

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