Scientists believe they may have found the least we can do to change our habits and still meaningfully improve our health and longevity.
In a new study involving tens of thousands of men and women, Australian researchers determined that adding about five minutes of sleep, two minutes of exercise and half a serving of vegetables a day to people’s normal routines could be expected to add a year or more to lifespans.
Other combinations of extra sleep, physical activity and nutrition likewise showed promise for significant gains in longevity and health, even if the changes to each behavior remained minor.
More surprising, the benefits from these three, tiny habit tweaks, taken together, noticeably outweighed larger changes to any one of the behaviors by itself.
“There seems to be a unique synergy” between sleep, movement and diet, said Emmanuel Stamatakis, a professor of physical activity and health at the University of Sydney and senior author of the study.
The findings add to mounting evidence that small, manageable changes to our behavior might have an outsize influence on how long and well we live. “We’re not talking about big, ambitious goals,” Stamatakis said. “We’re talking about four extra pieces of broccoli at dinner tonight, that kind of thing.”
The three habits that matter most
Sleep, physical activity and nutrition, or SPAN, are, of course, foundational to good health and longevity.
But plenty of questions about SPAN remain open. How much or what types of each element do we need? How little can we get away with? Is any single element — sleep, physical activity or nutrition — more essential than the others?
Stamatakis and his colleagues have been investigating those concerns for years, with a particular focus on physical activity and how little might be enough. In his group’s past research, even a few minutes a day of vigorous movement— the kind that gets your heart racing — were linked with reduced risks for cancer, other chronic diseases and premature death.
But the researchers also knew that, by itself, exercise wasn’t sufficient for long, healthy lives. People also need to sleep and eat. What, they wondered, was the ideal ratio of these three elements? And, maybe more realistically, what were the minimum changes people needed to make to achieve positive results?
Finding the right data
To start looking for possible answers, they turned to the UK Biobank, a depository of medical and lifestyle records about hundreds of thousands of men and women. It includes a subset of people who have worn an activity tracker for a week to record all their daily movements and nightly sleep patterns and filled out extensive questionnaires about their eating habits.
Stamatakis and his colleagues drew the records for nearly 60,000 of those volunteers, most in their 60s, then collated people’s typical daily sleep patterns, physical activity and nutrition (using a dietary scoring system common in academic research that ranges from zero to 100, based on intake of vegetables, whole grains, sugary drinks and other foods).
They also checked hospital, medical and death records to see who’d developed major illnesses or died within about eight years after joining the Biobank.
Then they started playing with the numbers.
What’s the ideal mix of habits?
Using the Biobank records, the researchers developed a statistical mortality model, which, Cassandra-like, predicted how long people theoretically would live or remain healthy, depending on their sleep, exercise and eating habits.
First, the researchers looked for what the model considered the ideal mix of those habits. It turned out to be at least 7.2 hours of sleep plus 42 minutes of physical activity daily and a high-quality diet (with a nutrition score of at least 58). That combo translated into nearly 10 additional years of good health and extra lifespan, compared with people whose SPAN numbers were lowest.
Encouragingly, the model also suggested that moving the dial seemed surprisingly easy. A mere five minutes daily of extra sleep, 1.9 minutes of added activity and a five-point improvement in diet — accomplished with an extra serving of vegetables or whole grains — raised people out of the model’s lowest, least-healthy category, statistically adding a year to their likely lifespans.
Such tiny changes also lengthened people’s likely healthspans, meaning the number of years they could expect to remain healthy, without major chronic diseases.
Similar gains in longevity and health from any one of the SPAN elements in isolation required much greater change, according to the model. By its calculations, people would need an extra 22 minutes of daily exercise, for instance, to match the effects of about two minutes of activity in combination with added sleep and diet improvements.
“We found changes could be more minimal” when combined, Stamatakis said, making them potentially easier to implement. “Putting your phone away a little earlier in the evening might be enough” to help you sleep five minutes more, he said. “Plus taking the stairs instead of the elevator at work and using whole grain bread on a sandwich. Those small things add up.”
The study’s limitations
This is a modeling study, though, Stamatakis said, built on predictions, not real lives. While it suggests strong links between improved sleep, physical activity, nutrition and longer, healthier lives, many other factors, including people’s genetics, incomes and health history probably also play roles.
Plus, “the precision with which the results are presented can make them seem more exact than I believe is warranted,” said I-Min Lee, a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who has long studied health behaviors. She wasn’t part of the new study. “I mean, 1.9 minutes of physical activity. Really?”
Stamatakis agreed. “These numbers are guides,” he said. “You don’t need to aim for exactly 1.9 more minutes of physical activity. Aim for a little more than before.”
The study’s over-precision “doesn’t detract from the take-home” message, Lee said, “that very small changes can help improve healthspan and lifespan.”
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