Have you ever gone through a period of not exercising, decided it’s ready to get going again, and then had the following internal self talk conversation between your motivated exercise angel, and your lazy couch potatoe devil?:

Angel: “I need to get active again to feel better”

Devil: “But I don’t have enough time to exercise enough so there’s no point in starting”

Angel: “Yes but I know that exercising is important for my health and to live longer”

Devil: “But the thought of hitting the recommended amount of activity needed to be ‘healthy’ nowadays is just so daunting”

Inevitably self 2 wins the argument and you reach for another snack and settle on the couch deciding the time commitment to be healthy is just too much.

Well what if I could convince you that you could reduce your chances of ALL CAUSES of death by 26% in just 10 minutes weekly?

A very recent (and very important) paper came out in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that officially quantified the amount of activity needed to reduce your chance of dying.

It’s news to nobody that physical activity lowers your risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes and as an offshoot your overall chances of dying. That said, the 2018 US and WHO guidelines on physical activity recommend that to be ‘healthy’ you need to get a minimum of 150 minutes weekly of moderate intensity aerobic physical activity (think brisk walking), or 75 minutes weekly of vigorous intensity aerobic activity (think running). This on top of two days weekly of muscle strengthening.

The lens with which most people view these recommendations is “If I can’t meet this minimum, then I may as well not do it”. Nowhere do they look at what effect a minimal amount of exercise has on your health.

This study does just that and it is a HUGE one. It used data from over 88,000 Americans aged 40-85. The study looked at total minutes per week of physical activity per person and whether it was light/moderate activity or vigorous. Of note, it is generally agreed upon in these papers that 1 minute of vigorous intensity activity is the equivalent of 2 minutes of moderate intensity activity. Now you know why we love high intensity intervals as seen in our past blog here.

The total amount of activity was then categorized into 8 groups based on minutes exercised per week; 10-59 minutes, 60-149 minutes and so on, all the way up to over 1500 minutes. Importantly they also adjusted the results for lifestyle factors (think smoking status, drinking, and BMI) and demographic characteristics (think sex, age, race, and education level).

Over the 10 year study period there was a total of 7855 deaths. Below are what I would deem the most important findings (remember these were all adjusted to take out factors such as smoking, drinking, and BMI):

• The protective effects of physical activity on ALL CAUSES OF DEATH start at a VERY low dose and gets stronger with an increasing amount of activity all the way up to 10 times the recommended dose (1500 minutes weekly).
• As little as 10 minutes weekly of light to moderate activity was associated with an 18% lower risk of death from any cause. Folks that did 1500 minutes per week lowered their death risk by 46%
• Seriously…..it begins at just 10-59 minutes per week, and the protective effects get stronger the more you exercise in a week.
• The protective effects are stronger with vigorous exercise compared to light/moderate exercise (great as this is also more time efficient). Those who did 10-59 minutes of vigorous activity lowered their death risk by 26% versus the 19% for light to moderate. This held true for high amounts of activity where just 600 vigorous minutes weekly lowers your death risk by 42%.
• The relationship is higher for cancer specific death compared to death by cardiovascular disease, specifically at high levels of physical activity.
• Some previous studies showed a return of high risk of cardiovascular disease and death by exercising too much….this study showed the opposite. Exercising up to 1500 minutes per week continues to have benefits protecting you from death.

Now the depressing part. Before reading on, guess the percentage of the 88,140 US adults aged 40-85 that are completely inactive, meaning zero minutes of exercise weekly.

Don’t cheat…..give your best guess.

42%. Yes, 42%. Nearly 37,000 people out of the 88,000 sample size. To put a positive spin on this, if we can convince this 42% of the population to do just 10 minutes of exercise per week, it will reduce their risk of dying by 19%.

The best part? This doesn’t have to happen at the gym! It’s literally ANY FORM OF EXERCISE. Walk instead of taking a cart with golf once weekly. Do a random few sets of squats at the airport. Do grocery store biceps curls when you shop.

Dr. Monique Tello, a Harvard trained physician sums it up best when it comes to lower your risk of death through exercise: “Every little bit counts…..and a lot counts even more”.