WALKING DAILY COULD ADD A DECADE TO YOUR LIFE, SAYS NEW RESEARCH

You probably know that walking can improve body composition, mobility and heart health, but did you know that it may even help you live for up to a decade longer? That’s the big takeaway from a new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine last week. Here’s everything you need to know, including how long you’d need to walk for and how often.

The study’s methods

For the study, researchers analysed data from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (NHANES), which collated the numbers from activity trackers worn by Americans aged over 40 for four days. By combining this with an analysis of 2019’s U.S. Census data and 2017 death data, the researchers were able to predict how different levels of physical activity influenced life expectancy.

The study's results

The data showed that life expectancy was positively correlated with exercise. The authors found that the 25% of individuals who were most active engaged in activity levels equivalent to walking 160 minutes every day at a pace of 3mph.

Based on this, they estimated that if all people boosted their activity to this level, they could increase their life expectancy from 78.6 to 84 years — an increase of over five years.

However, being in the lowest 25% of activity was associated with a decrease in life expectancy of around six years.

So, if these less active individuals logged an additional 111 minutes of walking each day, the authors of the study predicted that they could live 11 years longer.

What does this mean for us?

Granted, there are many variables that contribute to longevity (nutrition, sleep, stress…), but this isn’t the first study to connect more movement – particularly, walking – with a longer lifespan, suggesting that longevity is indeed a significant benefit of getting your daily steps in.

It’s also worth noting that the new research only analysed four days of participants’ activity; this means that the walking stats gleaned may not be reflective of participants’ usual walking habits, so it’s a little reductive to claim that walking for exactly 111 minutes per day will increase your lifespan by exactly 11 years. That said, participants were advised to go about their daily lives as normal while wearing the activity trackers, so while it’s hard to pinpoint specific numbers, those who walked more during the four days of intervention are probably generally more active in daily life. It’s a fair conclusion, then, that: ‘Higher physical activity levels provide a substantial increase in population life expectancy.’

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2024-11-29T11:55:59Z