Start With 15 Minutes

What the study found

Healthspan describes the years spent in good health. This lesson starts with a practical question: how much activity did people report in a large study of exercise and survival?

Researchers in Taiwan followed 416,175 adults for about eight years on average. People in the low-activity group averaged about 15 minutes of exercise a day. Their rate of death during follow-up was lower than that of the inactive group (adjusted hazard ratio 0.86, 95% confidence interval 0.81 to 0.91). The groups reported their own activity.

References

• Wen et al., The Lancet, 2011. Physical activity and mortality in Taiwan
• HealthBrew guide to healthspan and lifespan