Two separate studies suggest that minor lifestyle changes can lead to a longer life. One Norwegian-led team estimated that adding five min/day of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity and reducing daily sedentary time by 30 min/day might prevent a proportion of deaths under high-risk and population-based approaches.
Another analysis from an Australian-led group links small combined gains in sleep, physical activity, and diet quality with added years of lifespan and healthspan.
Physical inactivity has been estimated to cause 7–9% of global mortality. Self-reported physical activity can be inaccurate, with device-measured data offering a different basis for linking movement patterns to mortality. Threshold-based estimates that assume benefits start only after meeting activity recommendations leave uncertainty around smaller gains that fall below that target.
Sleep, physical activity, and nutrition shape all-cause mortality and noncommunicable disease risk. Separate attention to each behavior can miss behavior patterns that shift together in daily life.
Deaths averted with small shifts
In the study, “Deaths potentially averted by small changes in physical activity and sedentary time: an individual participant data meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies,” published in The Lancet, Norwegian researchers conducted an individual participant data meta-analysis to estimate the proportion of deaths preventable from five-min and 10-min increases in moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity and 30-min and 60-min reductions in daily sedentary time.
Five minutes a day of more moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity was associated with deaths preventable under two prevention strategies: 6% of all deaths might be preventable if the least active participants exercised for five minutes a day; 10% of all deaths might be preventable if all participants except the most active engaged.
Thirty minutes a day less sedentary time was also associated with fewer preventable deaths; 3% of all might be preventable if just the least-active were more active; 7.3% of deaths if all but the already most active engaged.
In the study, “Minimum combined sleep, physical activity, and nutrition variations associated with lifeSPAN and healthSPAN improvements: a population cohort study,” published in eClinicalMedicine, Australian researchers used a prospective cohort to determine the minimum combined improvements in sleep, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, and diet quality associated with longer lifespan and healthspan.
Optimal sleep, physical activity, and diet quality were associated with added years. Sleep of 7.2–8.0 hours a day, more than 42 minutes a day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, and a diet quality score of 57.5–72.5 were associated with 9.35 additional years of lifespan.
Minimum combined changes linked to smaller gains used minute-level and point-level shifts. Five minutes a day more sleep, 1.9 minutes a day more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, and a 5-point increase in diet quality score were associated with one additional year of lifespan. Twenty four minutes a day more sleep, 3.7 minutes a day more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, and a 23-point increase in diet quality score were associated with 4.0 additional years of healthspan.
Where the results point
Both teams framed small, realistic shifts as aligning with meaningful gains. One set of estimates tied a few minutes a day of more moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity and less sedentary time to shares of deaths potentially preventable.
Another set of estimates tied modest concurrent gains in sleep, physical activity, and diet quality to added years of lifespan and healthspan.