The practice of physical exercises for 15 minutes a day can increase life expectancy, on average, by three years, while watching television for six hours a day can reduce it by five years, according to studies published on Tuesday in UK.
Warnings about the risks of a sedentary lifestyle are not new, but two recent studies conducted in Taiwan and Australia on volunteers, published by two British medical journal – The Lancet and British Journal of Sports Medicine – explain this times what the risks.
In Taiwan, 400,000 volunteers have been placed under a complete medical supervision between 1996 and 2000 and divided into five categories based on lifestyle: inactive, least inactive, moderately active, active and very active.
Teams of doctors from the National Institute for Medical Research at the University of Taiwan and National Taiwan Sport University then compared the medical records of people who were exercising to the records of people who were not exercising at all.
Thus, those who exercise for 15 minutes per day have a reduction in risk of death in general by 14% and the risk of contracting cancer 10% lower and an increase of average life expectancy by three years. These benefits apply equally to women and men, for all ages and for people presenting cardiovascular risk.
Instead, people that were not exercising at all are facing an we increased risk of death, by 17%, compared to groups who practice low-intensity exercise.
Another study was conducted in parallel at the University of Queensland in Australia, using data collected in the period 1999 – 2000 from 11,000 adults aged over 25 years.
Based on a statistical model compared to the total Australian population aged over 25 years, the authors of this study concluded that watching television for six hours a day reduces life expectancy by an average of five years, because physical inactivity caused by this sedentary way of living.