Overview
- Among very inactive people, adding about five minutes of moderate-to-vigorous movement per day is associated with roughly a 6% lower mortality rate, with a potential 10% reduction at the population level if widely adopted.
- An extra ten minutes daily is linked to about a 15% mortality reduction across the population, with the greatest relative gains concentrated in the least active group.
- The pooled analysis used sensor-based data from more than 135,000 adults in Scandinavia, the United States and the United Kingdom with an average follow-up of around eight years, and findings were consistent across countries and age groups.
- Everyday movements such as brisk walking at roughly 5 km/h or taking the stairs drove the benefits, and short active bouts were more effective than only cutting sitting time.
- Reducing daily sitting by 30 minutes was linked to about a 3–7% lower mortality, although the authors stress the study is observational, excluded deaths in the first two years to limit bias and cannot prove causation.