Overview
- Researchers analyzed accelerometer data from about 135,000 adults in Norway, Sweden, the United States and the United Kingdom.
- A five-minute daily increase in moderate-to-vigorous activity is associated with roughly a 10% reduction in mortality at the population level, rising to about 15% with ten minutes.
- The biggest proportional gains come from focusing on the least active fifth of people, where adding five minutes a day could lower overall mortality by around 6%.
- Cutting sedentary time by 30 minutes a day in the general population, excluding the most active fifth, is estimated to reduce mortality by about 7%.
- The work was led by the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences and published in The Lancet, and the authors emphasize these figures are population estimates rather than prescriptions for individuals.