10 Nov Study finds 15 minutes of exercise a day can add 3 years to your life

Adding just 15 minutes of moderate exercise a day may add three years to your life, a ground-breaking study conducted in Taiwan has found.
Ideally, people should exercise three to five times a week for 30 minutes or more.
However, doing at least something is still a lot better doing nothing.
In fact, the study conducted in Taiwan has found that exercising for just 15 minutes a day can add three years to a person’s life.
This should be added motivation for those who think “why bother exercising” if they can’t be hard-core fitness people.
Experts hope that by pointing out that even getting lower doses of exercise can be very beneficial will help get more people off the couch.
Lead researcher Chi Pang Wen of Taiwan’s National Health Research Institutes said 15 minutes a day of moderate forms of exercise, such as taking a brisk walk on a treadmill or riding an exercise bike, would improve anyone‘s health.
“(Exercise is) for men, women, the young and old, smokers, healthy and unhealthy people,” Wen told Reuters news service. “Doctors, when they see any type of patient, this is a one-size-fits-all type of advice.”
Wen and colleagues published their findings in medical journal “The Lancet” earlier this month.
They tracked over 416,000 participants for 13 years, recording their health records and levels of physical activity.
After accounting for variables such as differences in age, weight, sex and many health-related factors, the researches concluded that just 15 minutes of moderate exercise a day increased life expectancy by three years compared to those who remained inactive.
“The first 15 minutes … the benefits are enormous,” Wen said.
As had been reported in many other studies, exercise can also lower the risk for cancer and many other diseases.
“Sooner or later, you are going to die. But compared to the inactive group, the low exercise group has a reduction of 10 percent in cancer mortality,” Wen said. “None of the other papers were able to conclude … what specific amount of exercise would be enough.
“Ours is the first one to say that 15 minutes would be enough,” Wen added. “We hope this will make it more attractive for inactive people, that they can allocate 15 minutes a day, rather than 30, which is more difficult.”

At Home Fitness consultant Aaron Dorksen’s blog deals with a variety of fitness topics, ranging from workout tips, motivational ideas and feature stories on how exercise impacts people’s lives. E-mail him with comments, questions or ideas for future blogs at aaron@athomefitness.com