Baku, December 3, AZERTAC

If all Americans were as active as their most workout-obsessed countrymen, the average adult could add five years to their life expectancy, a new analysis has found, according to EuroNews.

It’s well-known that people who exercise regularly are at lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, depression, dementia, and a slew of other health issues.

But the new study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, underscores the powerful role that physical activity plays in our longevity – and how significant the gaps are between the most and least active groups.

For the study, researchers divided US adults aged 40 and older into four groups based on their physical activity levels from 2003 to 2006, and then followed their health outcomes over the years.

In that period, the most active people were 73 per cent less likely to die from any cause than the least active adults.

“If there's something you could do to more than halve your risk of death, physical activity is enormously powerful,” Lennert Veerman, the study’s lead author and a professor of public health at Griffith University in Australia, said in a statement.

The most active adults exercised at a level that is equivalent to walking for two hours and 40 minutes per day. To catch up with them, the least active adults would need to add nearly two hours of walking to their daily routines.

But if they did, they could live an average of 10.9 years longer, the estimates show. For the most workout-averse adults, that translates to an extra 6.3 hours of life expectancy for every hour-long walk.

Notably, an hour-long walk would not make much difference for the most active adults, who may have already “maxed out” the benefits of exercise, Veermen said.

Supercharging physical activity levels would bring the average US life expectancy to 83.7 years, up from 78.6 years in 2017.

The researchers said the results underscore the importance of physical exercise for health, especially when it comes to how communities are designed.

By making cities more walkable and bikeable, “we could not only increase longevity but also reduce pressure on our health systems and the environment,” Veermen said.