Exercise is one of the most common recommendations when it comes to maintaining good health. This is demonstrated once again by a study carried out in Taiwan which ensures that with only fifteen minutes of physical activity a day the risk of death is reduced by 14 percent and life expectancy is increased by three years. The study, published today online by ‘The Lancet’ magazine, was carried out with more than 400,000 participants who were followed for an average of eight years, between 1996 and 2008. Its purpose was to find out if an exercise level of less than 150 recommended weekly minutes may have health benefits.
If inactive individuals practiced a little exercise each day, “one in six deaths would be postponed ,” was the conclusion of its authors , led by doctors Chi-Pang Wen, of the National Institute of Health Research in Taiwan, and Jackson. Poi Man Way, from the National Taiwan Sports University.
Sport to improve health
The researchers divided the participants into five categories according to the volume of exercise practiced: inactive or low, medium, high or very active. Compared with the inactive, those belonging to the low activity group, who exercised an average of 92 minutes a week – about 15 minutes a day – had a 14 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality, a lower risk of cancer mortality 10 percent less and an average life expectancy of three more years, according to the study.
And for every additional 15 minutes a day of exercise, the risk of death was reduced by 4 percent. And that of dying from cancer in 1 percent, regardless of age, sex and having cardiovascular problems.
“Knowing that just 15 minutes of exercise a day can substantially reduce an individual’s risk of dying can encourage many more people to incorporate little amount of physical activity in their busy lives,” Canadian doctors Anil Nigam and Martin Juneau, of the Montreal Heart Institute and the University of Montreal, say in an accompanying commentary.