Dietitians and sports experts have found that exercise for only 13 minutes a day may increase life expectancy for 3 years.
The findings of the new study, which gathered data from thousands around the world, suggest that people do not need to spend hours in the gymnasiums for health benefits, but that only a quarter of an hour of activity a day can be enough.
The study was sponsored by a global health insurance company that examined exercise tracking data for 140,000 people.
Researchers at the company found that the average life expectancy of inactive people, who had previously been active for less than 30 minutes a week, grows for three years if they exercise 90 minutes a week over 12 months.
This means less than 13 minutes of sports activity every day, such as jogging, riding a bike or even using a lawn mower in the garden.
Inactive participants who raised their exercise levels to three hours a week, or 25 minutes a day, saw an increase in life expectancy by four years.
The company also found that those who kept fit by doing 2.5 hours of exercise a week, recommended by the UK's National Health Service, increased their life expectancy by 1.7 years, if they added only half an hour. Of exercises per week (four additional minutes per day), for a total of three hours per week.