Scientists discover that surprising daily activities can add an extra decade to your life

Want to add another decade to your life?

You don’t have to embark on a complex daily fitness regimen; just go for lots of long walks, say Australian researchers.

Scientists found that those who walked a total of 111 minutes per day lived an average of 11 years longer than people who walked very little.

Experts have warned for years that standing still for too much of the day increases the risk of a host of health problems, including weight gain, type 2 diabetes, cancer and even premature death.

Now the team from Griffith University in Queensland say they should aim for enough walking time to match the levels of the 25 percent 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 years of life lost due to low levels of physical activity could be comparable to the losses due to smoking and high blood pressure.

‘I wondered how that would translate into life expectancy, and how much extra life time walking would provide.’

In the study, researchers assessed the physical activity levels of more than 36,000 American adults aged 40 and older.

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This data was collected by health trackers worn for at least ten hours – for four or more days.

The researchers translated all forms of moderate to vigorous exercise into the equivalent in walking minutes, so that the comparison between groups is 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.

The scientists found that the least active neighborhood did the equivalent of 50 minutes of walking a day.

The next group ran for about 80 minutes while the third ran for about 110 minutes.

The most active quarter of the population recorded the equivalent of 160 minutes (almost three hours) of walking per day.

As one of the least active neighborhoods, llead to a loss of 5.8 years in life expectancy, they brought it down from about 78 to about 73, she 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.

So if the least physically active group did an extra 111 minutes of activity per day, they could extend their lives by as much as 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 prove why prolonged walking might increase life expectancy.

The paper also had some ‘limitations,” they said, including the fact that physical activity levels were self-reported.

But her added, “Infrastructure measures that encourage active transportation, walkable neighborhoods, and green spaces may be promising approaches to increasing physical activity and resulting healthy life expectancy at the population level.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that adults do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week – or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise.

It is estimated that a sedentary lifestyle in Britain, where Britons spend their working hours at their desks and then take the train or car on the way home to sit in front of the TV, is estimated to kill thousands of people every year.

A 2019 estimate puts the annual death toll at 70,000 people per year, with the health problems costing the NHS £700 million annually to treat.

A 2018 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study estimated that nearly one in ten (8.3 percent) of adult deaths in the country were caused by physical inactivity.

The WHO estimates the annual global death toll from physical inactivity at around 2 million per year, putting it in the running to be among the top 10 leading causes of global death and disability.