“Insufficient physical activity” is widely recognized as a major preventable risk factor for death worldwide. However, public health discussions on exercise interventions have long centered on one question: whether the recommended standards are met.
A recent meta-analysis published in The Lancet broke away from the traditional framework of “meeting the standard or not” and focused on a more practical question: How much health benefit can we gain simply by moving a few more minutes each day and sitting less?
Previous estimates of preventable deaths mostly relied on Population Attributable Fractions (PAF), which assume that all people not meeting WHO physical activity guidelines would reach the recommended levels. This binary approach ignores the distribution of activity levels in the population and implies that health benefits are only achieved by “meeting the standard”, which is often unrealistic in practice.
Therefore, this meta-analysis, based on device-measured data from large prospective cohorts and considering the non-linear dose–response relationship between physical activity, sedentary time, and mortality risk, estimated the preventable proportion of deaths (Potential Impact Fractions, PIFs) associated with:
adding 5 and 10 minutes of MVPA per day,
reducing sedentary time by 30 and 60 minutes per day,
increasing low-intensity and total physical activity by 30 and 60 minutes per day.The results showed that even small increases in daily physical activity can significantly reduce mortality at the population level.When such increases occur mainly among the least active individuals:
Adding just 5 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per day could prevent about 6% of all-cause deaths.
When extended to most people except the most active group, the preventable proportion of deaths rises to approximately 10%.