Study: Move more, sit less and live longer

It is well known that it is good for health to move and reduce the time you sit still. But we do not know exactly how much or little is needed to get health benefits.

And many of the recommendations on physical activity that are given today are based on studies in which the participants themselves have appreciated how much they move, which poses many problems.

Among other things, people are notoriously good at overestimating how much you actually move.

This is what a group of researchers from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and the Norwegian School of Sports in Oslo wanted to change and began to review a number of studies already published - which resulted in a meta-analysis published in the medical journal BMJ.

Appropriate studies were selected in which the subjects' activity was measured using activity meters.

"In this way we got away from the problem that people like to report one thing but do another," says Ulf Ekelund, professor at the Norwegian School of Sport in Oslo and one of the world's leading experts on physical activity.

A total of eight studies were left where researchers were able to obtain data on not only how sedentary or active a person was but also how intense the physical activity was.

A total of 36,383 adults from 40 years and up were included in the study, the mean age was 62 years and the participants were followed on average for 5.8 years. And the researchers' message based on the results can be summarized briefly and simply:

Sit smaller and move more and more often.

- Yes, all activity counts and is positive. Take the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator, bike or walk if you can - everything is added, says Ulf Ekelund.

It is also believed that the results are important to be able to give clearer and more evidence-based recommendations on physical activity and health, not least because the effect of physical activity on mortality in the meta-analysis was greater than in studies where the participants themselves reported how much they moved.

- For example, we can see that the group that was most active had a five times less mortality than the group that was least active. The strength of this connection is considerably stronger than we can see in previous studies based on self-reported data, says Ulf Ekelund.

The greatest risk reduction in mortality was seen at 300 minutes of light physical activity, such as cooking and slow walking, during the day or 24 minutes of means of hard physical activity during the day - for example, fast walking, running or lifting heavy weights.

More than 9.5 hours of sedentary per day (sleeping time not included), on the other hand, were associated with a statistically significant increased risk of premature death.

The results of the study cannot be translated into a younger population under 40 years or other populations than those studied - which came from Western Europe and the United States.

It should also be borne in mind that these are observational studies, which means that we cannot conclude that more physical activity definitely leads to reduced mortality.

For example, people who are more active have a more healthy lifestyle overall and that people who move less may have other problems that affect their health, such as illnesses.