Everyone has a different relationship with exercise. You might be a fitness junkie, hitting the gym five days a week or training for a marathon to push your body’s limits. But for most Americans, physical activity takes a backseat to everything else going on in life.
Only 26% of men, 19% of women, and 20% of adolescents get enough activity to meet aerobic and muscle-strengthening guidelines, according to the Department of Health and Human Services . If you’re one of the many people currently not hitting the minimum exercise recommendations—150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week—then you might be missing out on substantial gains in longevity and healthspan , according to a new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine . Researchers analyzed 2017 mortality data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics .
Over 36,000 Americans over age 40 were included, whose physical activity levels were based on data from the 2003 to 2006 National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey . They examined how much physical activity reduced or increased life expectancy. Researchers translated all forms of moderate to vigorous exercise into the equivalent in walking minutes, to make the comparison between groups easier to interpret.
Activity levels were divided into four categories: The least active individuals were doing the equivalent of 50 minutes of walking per day; the next group was at 80 minutes of daily walking; the third gro.