Formula for a healthy life: 5 minutes of extra sleep and two minutes of brisk walking can reduce the risk of death.

News Topical, Digital Desk : Small improvements in physical activity, such as two to five minutes of brisk walking, and changes in sleep and diet, can have a significant impact on lifespan and reduce mortality in a population, providing a practical starting point for healthy behavior change, a study has found.

According to a new study, published in The Lancet's EClinicalMedicine journal, a five-minute increase in sleep, two minutes of brisk walking, and an extra serving of vegetables per day could add a year to life for people with the worst sleep, physical activity, and dietary habits. The study's findings suggest that small improvements in sleep, physical activity, and diet, when combined, can lead to significant changes in lifespan. This provides a sustainable and more practical starting point for behavior change.

The study was conducted by an international research team from the UK, Australia, Brazil and Chile. The study defined the worst combination of behaviours as including five hours and 30 minutes of sleep per day, less than 10 minutes of physical activity and a poor diet quality score. The most favourable combination of seven to eight hours of sleep per day, at least 40 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity and a healthy diet was linked to an increase of more than nine years in lifespan and years spent in good health. 

Big gains from small improvements 

The team also showed that the combined effect of sleep, physical activity, and diet is greater than the sum of the individual behaviors. For example, to gain one year of life expectancy through sleep alone, people with the worst lifestyles would need an additional five minutes of sleep per day, or 25 minutes more sleep, than if they also improved their physical activity and diet.

The research authors wrote that a combination of at least five minutes of sleep per day, 1.9 minutes of MVPA (moderate to vigorous physical activity) per day, and a five-point increase in diet quality score (such as an additional serving of vegetables per day or an additional 1.5 servings of whole grains per day) was associated with an additional year of life.

Study done on 60 thousand people 

Nearly 60,000 participants in the UK Biobank were recruited between 2006 and 2010 and followed up for approximately eight years. A subset  wore a wrist-mounted wearable device for seven days between 2013 and 2015, which measured physical activity.

Physical activity reduces the risk of death 

Another study published in The Lancet journal found that spending five more minutes of moderate physical activity, such as walking five kilometers per hour, could reduce the risk of death by 10 percent in most adults and by six percent in those who are less active. If most adults, who spend an average of 10 hours a day sitting, reduced their sitting time by 30 minutes each day, it could reduce all-cause mortality by seven percent. Reducing this by one hour could reduce all-cause mortality by 13 percent.

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