A new study provides some compelling motivation to get outdoors and move: for every extra hour you spend walking each day, you could be adding six hours to your lifespan.
This potential benefit applies to those who are currently in the least active 25% of people in the US, based on fitness tracker data analyzed by a team of researchers from Griffith University in Australia.
For those in the top 25% of active individuals, an additional walk doesn’t offer as significant a boost, since most of the health benefits from exercise have already been reaped. However, the study underscores and quantifies the key advantages of leading an active lifestyle.
“If all individuals were as active as the top 25 percent of the population, Americans over the age of 40 could live an extra 5.3 years on average,” write the researchers in their published paper.
“The greatest gain in lifetime per hour of walking was seen for individuals in the lowest activity quartile where an additional hour’s walk could add 376.3 min (about 6.3 hours) of life expectancy.”
The research team analyzed wearable activity data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) in the US, which enrolls 5,000 volunteers annually. For this study, data from 824 participants were excluded because they had not worn the activity trackers long enough.
To assess how changes in activity levels affect mortality risk, the researchers compared the NHANES data to a life-table model (which tracks mortality rates at specific age intervals) and incorporated findings from previous studies on exercise and lifespan.
The team aims to raise awareness about the significant health benefits of increased physical activity. They emphasize that moving up through the activity quartiles—from the lowest to the highest—may be more achievable than many realize.
“This is not an unreasonable prospect, as 25 percent of the population is already doing it,” says Lennert Veerman, a professor of public health at Griffith University.
“It can be any type of exercise [to reach that top quartile] but would roughly be the equivalent of just under three hours of walking per day.”
While the idea that exercise contributes to a longer life is not new, quantifying and simplifying its benefits can be attention-grabbing—whether it’s just five minutes a day to lower blood pressure or nine seconds a week to build muscle.
Now, there’s a new goal to strive for: an extra hour of walking each day. If that sounds overwhelming, keep in mind that any amount of exercise can have a positive impact on your health and well-being.
“If there’s something you could do to more than halve your risk of death, physical activity is enormously powerful,” says Veerman.
“If we could increase investment in promoting physical activity and creating living environments that promote it such as walkable or cyclable neighbourhoods and convenient, affordable public transport systems, we could not only increase longevity but also reduce pressure on our health systems and the environment.”
The research has been published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
