One in 10 early deaths could be prevented if everyone engaged in a small amount of daily exercise, such as an 11-minute brisk walk, a major study said Wednesday.
Physical activity is known to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer and other leading causes of death, but exactly how much is needed to have an effect is unclear.
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So an international team of researchers put together the results of 196 previous studies, involving more than 30 million people, to create one of the largest reviews ever conducted on the topic.
They calculated that almost one in six early deaths could be prevented if everyone in the study did at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week, which is the level recommended by Britain’s National Health Service.
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But even half that amount — 75 minutes a week or less than 11 minutes a day — could prevent one in 10 deaths, according to a meta-analysis published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
This included a 17 percent reduction in heart disease and a seven percent drop in cancer.
For a person who engages in little or no physical activity, there is a 23 percent lower risk of early death for 11 minutes a day.
Soren Breze, an expert in the epidemiology of physical activity at Britain’s University of Cambridge and co-author of the study, told AFP it was “extraordinarily good news”.
“All you have to do is set aside a little more than 10 minutes each day,” he said.
“And you don’t have to go to the gym to do these types of activities, it’s part of daily life,” he added.
He suggested that people try getting off at the bus stop earlier on their way to work — or bicycling home.
“It’s very flexible,” he said.
Because it takes years to assess how exercise affects the risk of such diseases, many of the studies were done more than a decade ago, Brace said.
This means that the activity reported by the study participants was less accurate than what can be achieved by newer technologies such as fitness trackers, Brez said, acknowledging that this was a limitation of the study.
Cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke killed 17.9 million people globally in 2019, while cancer caused nearly 10 million deaths the following year, according to the World Health Organisation.
The text of this story is published from a wire agency feed without any modification.
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