Incorporating 22 minutes of physical activity into every day may be enough to offset the heightened risk of death from a highly sedentary lifestyle, a new study suggests. But the findings also show that higher daily tallies of physical activity are linked to a lower risk, regardless of the amount of time spent seated every day.

The researchers pooled individual participant data from four groups of people fitted with activity trackers to find out whether physical activity might modify the association between sedentary time and death, and vice versa, and what amount of physical activity and sitting time might influence risk.

The data were collected between 2003 and 2019 from various large-scale healthy aging and physical activity studies. Close to 12,000 people with a mean age of 66 (50%,women) were included in the analysis. They had a minimum of four days of 10 daily hours of activity tracker records, had been monitored for at least two years, and had provided details of potentially influential factors: sex, educational level, weight, height, smoking history, alcohol intake, and whether they had current and/or previous cardiovascular disease, cancer and/or diabetes.

In all, 5,943 people spent fewer than 10.5 hours sitting down every day, while  6,042 clocked 10.5 or more sedentary hours. The analysis of the activity tracker data showed that being sedentary for more than 12 hours a day was associated with a 38% heightened risk of death compared with a daily tally of 8 hours—but only among those doing fewer than 22 daily minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. More than 22 daily minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity was associated with a lower risk of death.

The researchers conclude that small amounts of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity "may be an effective strategy to ameliorate the mortality risk from high sedentary time, where accumulating more than 22 minutes...eliminates the risk of high sedentary time."

To read the full article, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, click here