15 Minutes Daily Exercise Adds 3 Years to Life, is ‘Bare Minimum for Health’

Anthony Gucciardi
Natural Society

In our inactive society, most people simply aren’t exercising enough to support their own health. However, contrary to what some people may think, findings show that just 15 minutes of daily exercise can increase life expectancy by 3 years while cutting your risk of “all-cause” death rates by 14%. This is good news for many who claim not to have enough time to exercise.

The Lancet study looked at more than 400,000 individuals from Taiwan and found that while other exercise plans could be more beneficial, just 15 minutes a day or 90 minutes per week of moderate exercise is the ‘bare minimum for health’. This is actually good news for inactive societies, as 15 minutes of exercise should be very easy to incorporate. What’s more, those exercising even more can feel that much better for all the hard work.

According to the study:

• Those who exercised  for an average of 92 min per week or 15 min a day saw a 14% reduced risk of all-cause mortality. These individuals were also expected to live 3 years longer than inactive individuals.

• For each 15 min of daily exercise beyond the minimum 15, all-cause mortality risk was reduced by 4% and all-cancer mortality by 1%.

• “Individuals who were inactive had a 17%…increased risk of mortality compared with individuals in the low-volume group”.

• Benefits applied to all age groups and both sexes.

Add Years to Your Life

According to the UK government, the body benefits tremendously from just two 10-minute bursts of activity each day or 30 minutes of exercise for five days throughout the week. Most people can find the time to fit this into their weekly schedule, especially since the benefits are so rich. But as mentioned, 15 minutes of exercise daily is found to be the bare minimum. A brisk walk on your lunch hour or an evening stroll around the block would easily take care of this requirement for better health.

Exercise, like many things, can be habit forming. Once people begin to be consistent in their exercise routine, they find that it is easy and pleasurable to add more time.

Other research also came across similar findings in the realm of exercise and life expectancy. One study determined that simply jogging on a routine basis resulted in a lifespan increase of around 6.2 years for men and 5.6 years for women. When considering the potential life expectancy increase when coupled with a healthy nutritional intake full of high quality organic produce and other life-promoting foods, it is easy to see that you can easily extend life by far more than 5-6 years.

Additional Sources:

BBC.co.uk