Whether it is walking up the stairs instead of using a lift or adding nuts and seeds to your morning porridge, everyone loves an easy hack with proven health benefits. And according to new research, the blend of three tiny tweaks could add a whole year to your life.
Scientists at The University of Sydney say that just a few extra minutes of sleep and exercise, along with an extra portion of veg each day, could increase a person’s lifespan by one year. It sounds too good to be true – so is it?
What did the researchers investigate?
Countless studies have explored the impact of diet, exercise and nutrition on our health and wellbeing. We know that a balanced diet, regular exercise and sufficient sleep are the foundations of a robust existence.
However, Professor Nicholas Koemel, research fellow at The University of Sydney and a lead author of the study, took a different approach by looking into how these three factors interact with one another and, in concert, impact our health. The study tracked 60,000 UK adults over the course of eight years using UK Biobank data, and combined the sleep and physical activity captured on wrist wearables with self-reported diet surveys.
“We mapped these factors together and then explored their relationship with two different outcomes, lifespan and healthspan,” Dr Koemel says. Healthspan includes “the number of quality years that you live free from chronic conditions” such as dementia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cardiovascular disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes.
Professor Nicholas Koemel, research fellow at The University of Sydney, co-authored the recent study – Nicola Bailey
The study’s key aim, Dr Koemel says, was to explore the minimum and optimal variations of diet, exercise and sleep associated with a meaningful increase in lifespan and healthspan.
The minimum and optimal combinations
For people with poor lifestyle habits, Dr Koemel’s team found that taking on as little as five more minutes of sleep, two more minutes of moderate or vigorous exercise and a few extra tablespoons of vegetables per day was associated with an additional year of life expectancy.
If you’re feeling more motivated, they found that adding 24 minutes of sleep, exercising for about four minutes longer and fitting in an additional cup of veg and a serving of whole grains each day was associated with an additional four years of healthspan.
Meanwhile, the optimal combination for everyone is seven to eight hours of sleep, more than 40 minutes of exercise per day and a high-quality diet. “This was associated with over nine additional years of lifespan and healthspan,” Dr Koemel says.
The team’s baseline was built around the five per cent of people with the worst health habits. These people slept for roughly five and a half hours, exercised for about seven minutes per day and had low overall diet quality. “It is perhaps unsurprising that [for these people] even very small increases in healthy behaviours are associated with increased life and healthspan,” says Dr David Clancy, lecturer in biogerontology at Lancaster University.
However, when Dr Koemel’s team modelled the minimum combined changes against the general population, they still found an approximate gain of one year of lifespan. This means that even those with generally healthy habits can benefit from making these small lifestyle tweaks.
An extra half-serving of vegetables is easy to incorporate into your lunch or dinner – iStockphoto
We asked Ilaria Bellantuono, professor in musculoskeletal ageing and co-director of the Healthy Lifespan Institute at the University of Sheffield, for her take on the research. She says, “The novelty of this study is not that tiny lifestyle changes magically extend life for everyone, but that small, coordinated improvements across sleep, physical activity and diet appear more effective than changing just one behaviour in isolation.”
Diet improvements by themselves, for example, were not enough to make any significant change in lifespan. Meanwhile, you would need to sleep 60 per cent longer each day to gain an additional year of lifespan.
“We’ve all experienced that late night where we don’t get enough sleep and then realise we’re hungrier than usual the next day, and perhaps end up eating additional snacks or not moving as much because we’re fatigued,” Dr Koemel says to explain of how interlinked our diet, exercise and sleep habits really are. Alternatively, eating sugary foods before bedtime can make it harder to fall asleep because they give your body an energy boost by causing blood-sugar levels to spike.
How can we benefit from these findings?
“Both the minimum and optimal combinations are important, too, because in my mind, there is always a spectrum of individuals who might be open or ready for behaviour change,” Dr Koemel adds. “This gives everyone a starting point to work from.”
“Our research shows that there is a potential synergy between sleep, exercise and diet,” Dr Koemel says. “When you make small improvements across all three behaviours, you optimise behaviour change in a more sustainable way, rather than making major overhauls to just one health habit.”
He advises looking at your day as a whole and pinpointing where you might be able to implement change. Rather than vast sweeping changes that are not sustainable, focus on small adjustments. “For sleep, it could be as simple as going to bed five minutes earlier or setting your alarm just a few minutes later,” he says.
For exercise, you could achieve the daily two minutes by taking the stairs instead of the lift, he suggests. Alternatively, you could try mixing up your travel plans and hopping off the bus one stop early for a brisk walk.
Making small tweaks for better health, like adding an extra two minutes to your daily walk, can be more sustainable than a lifestyle overhaul – Getty
For the diet component, consuming an extra half-serving of vegetables translates to roughly three tablespoons (40 grams) of broccoli, carrots or spinach. These could easily be incorporated into your lunchtime salad or mixed into your dinner.
“These are really small changes, but it’s about building them as deliberate and regular habits on a path to better overall lifestyle patterns,” Dr Koemel says.
More scientific focus on small tweaks
The findings support the results of a separate study that was published online in The Lancet on the same day as Dr Koemel’s research. This study analysed data from more than 135,000 adults across Norway, Sweden and the United States, combined with UK Biobank data.
The researchers found that small increases in daily physical activity – as little as a five-minute walk at a moderate pace – could potentially reduce mortality risk by 10 per cent. Additionally, they found a nine per cent reduction in mortality risk when those sitting for eight or more hours a day reduced their sitting time by 30 minutes.
All in all, these studies point to a growing interest in small tweaks and gradual changes for better health, rather than dramatic overhauls and crash diets that tend to be less sustainable in the long term.
“There is no drug that protects against a range of diseases, including dementia, that works as well as exercise,” Dr Clancy says. “Generally – and especially as we age – exercise is about creating sustainable, and ideally enjoyable, habits.”
If you live somewhere with nice weather, this could be a brief brisk walk, extending your bicycle ride to work or some gardening. However, if you live in the UK or somewhere with similarly unpredictable weather, you could do a daily wall sit to build lower-body strength, calf raises while brushing your teeth or squats while waiting for the kettle to boil.
If you are keen to try something new, Dr Clancy recommends Radio Taiso – a group exercise routine that has been popular for nearly a century in Japan. It only takes three minutes and is designed to wake up the whole body through a range of low-impact movements including arm swings, gentle squats and side twists. There are guided videos on YouTube.
“Whatever it is, try to make it enjoyable and don’t overpromise as this can lead to negative reinforcement,” Dr Clancy adds. “Make the activity circumscribed and achievable, so that its completion is a positive reinforcement.”
He concludes: “As the surgeons say, ‘stasis is the basis for disease’, so, ultimately, just keep moving.”
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