Staying Active In Adulthood Can Cut Death Risk By 40%, Says Major Study

Making the switch to a physically active lifestyle at any point during adulthood reduces your risk of dying from any cause, particularly cardiovascular disease. A comprehensive meta-analysis of 85 studies shows that individuals who are more physically active compared with sedentary ones overall have a 30-40% lower mortality risk, while individuals who were sedentary but became physically active later in life have an average 20-25% lower mortality risk.

This research has been published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. According to the researchers, the evidence shows that switching to a more physically active lifestyle at any point during adult life may increase lifespan and that it is never too late to be active.

At present, guidelines recommend that adults try to accumulate 150-300 minutes of target moderate intensity physical activity, or 75-150 minutes of vigorous intensity physical activity, or an equivalent combination of moderate and vigorous intensity physical activity, the researchers explain.

However, these guidelines were based on the best available evidence base – though the majority was based on only measuring physical activity at only one point in time, they caution, which may obscure the consequences of whether changes to physical activity were made during adulthood.

The researchers therefore wanted to find out if differing patterns of physical activity, as well as its cumulative impact during adulthood, might be associated with a lower risk of death from all causes, and specifically from cardiovascular disease and cancer.

They scoured research databases for relevant studies that assessed physical activity at two or more points in time, and included in their review 85 studies published in English up to April 2024, with sample sizes ranging from 357 to 6,572,984 participants.
Fifty nine of the studies looked at long term patterns of physical activity across adulthood; 16 looked at the average benefits of different physical activity levels; and 11 explored the potential impact of cumulative physical activity on risk of death.

To overcome the challenges posed by different analytical methods used, the researchers carried out separate analyses for each of them.

Pooled data analysis of the study results showed that, overall, a higher level of physical activity was associated with lower risks of all the included outcomes.

Consistently active people (32 studies) had around a 30-40% lower risk of dying from any cause, while those who increased their levels of physical activity (21 studies) from below those recommended had a 20-25% lower risk of death from any cause.

Specifically, individuals who had shifted from being physically inactive to being physically active had a 22 percent relative reduction in the risk of dying from any cause compared to those who remained inactive, while individuals who increased their leisure-time physical activity levels had a 27 percent relative reduction in risk of dying from any cause.

On the other hand, there was no evidence that tied an active lifestyle to a decreased risk of death from any cause where a previously active lifestyle was substituted with an inactive one.

Overall, the connection seen between a high volume of physical activity and a reduced risk of death was stronger for cardiovascular disease than for cancer.

In comparison to individuals who were consistently inactive over time, those who were consistently active on the whole or were only active during leisure time had approximately 40 and 25 percent, respectively, reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease and from cancer.

But overall the evidence for the connection between physical activity patterns and death from a specific cause is still inconclusive, especially for cancer mortality.

The pooled data showed that people who were consistently active or who became active were at lower risk of death from all-causes and specifically cardiovascular disease, when they meet the recommended levels of physical activity weekly.

However, being consistently physically active and accumulating more than the recommended maximum weekly amount of moderate to vigorous intensity exercise was associated with only a small additional reduction in risk.

Maintaining or increasing physical activity at levels below the recommended weekly amount, however, was associated with appreciable health benefits, indicating that some physical activity is always better than none, say the researchers.

The researchers acknowledge some limitations to their findings, including that most of the studies included in the pooled data analyses relied on subjective assessments of physical activity, which may not always have been accurate.

(With inputs from ANI)

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