Exercising just 15 minutes a day adds three years to your life

Exercising for just 15 minutes a day will add three years to your life.  The exercise doesn’t have to be strenuous – just walking at a reasonable pace is enough, researchers have discovered.
The more you do, the better your chances of living longer, say researchers from the University of Texas.  Light exercise carried out for 30 minutes every day can increase life expectancy by four years.
The new 15-minutes-a-day regime is far easier than the previous guidelines, which believed that people needed to do moderate exercise – such as brisk walking – for 21 minutes every day before seeing any positive impact on their health.
For the new study, the researchers screened the health of 416,175 Taiwanese for eight years; of these, 54 per cent carried out less than an hour of any physical activity a week, and were classified as inactive.   
Compared to the inactives, those who performed light exercise – such as walking – for 15 minutes a day, or 92 minutes a week, reduced their risk of dying from any cause by 14 per cent.  These risks were reduced by four minutes for every additional 15 minutes of exercise up to 100 minutes a day.
(Source: The Lancet, 2011; doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60749-6).