A total of 150–300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week, such as brisk walking, is sufficient.
People who walk briskly for 150–300 minutes each week have a mortality risk roughly 30% lower than those who don’t exercise at all. Even if they fall short of that amount, their risk is still about 20% lower. When they reach 3–5 times that volume, the risk drops to its minimum level — about 40% lower. Exceeding that amount further won’t lower the risk any more, but it certainly won’t hurt either.
It costs nothing. You only need 20–45 minutes each day. Th…
When multiple observational studies are pooled together (without subgroup analysis), individuals whose activit…
It costs nothing. You only need 20–45 minutes each day. The real challenge is sticking with it over the long term.
When multiple observational studies are pooled together (without subgroup analysis), individuals whose activity levels reached 1–2 times the recommended minimum had a mortality risk roughly 31% lower than non-exercisers (HR 0.69). This amount corresponds to 7.5–15 MET·hours per week, or about 150–300 minutes of brisk walking weekly. Those who failed to meet the minimum still saw a 20% reduction in risk (HR 0.80). For those whose activity levels reached 3–5 times the minimum, the risk dropped to its peak level — about 39% lower (HR 0.61). Any further increase did not yield additional benefit, though it remained harmless (at 10 times the minimum, HR was still 0.69). Another pooled analysis based on accelerometer measurements found that the top quarter of participants with the highest levels of moderate-to-vigorous activity had a mortality risk roughly 48% lower than the bottom quarter (HR 0.52). Accelerometers are wearable devices used to measure actual physical activity levels.
Arem H 等 (2015). Leisure time physical activity and mortality: a detailed pooled analysis of the dose-response relationship. JAMA Internal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.0533；Ekelund U 等 (2019). Dose-response associations between accelerometry measured physical activity and sedentary time and all cause mortality: systematic review and harmonised meta-analysis. BMJ. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l4570
Open source linkYou can choose either this recommendation or Recommendation 11 (which suggests walking 7,000–8,000 steps daily). Keep in mind that these studies are purely observational in nature. The studies relying on accelerometer measurements have relatively short follow-up periods and include a higher proportion of older participants; they also contain some bias related to reverse causality — i.e., individuals who were already ill may have become less active. Therefore, the real benefit is somewhat smaller than the apparent reduction of mortality risk to 0.52 times the baseline level.