In a recent study published in the journal JAMA Network Open , researchers investigated the independent associations between sedentary behaviors and light-intensity physical activity (LPA) with healthy aging. Previous studies have shown that replacing sedentary behaviors with improved sleep quality or moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) may improve individuals' odds of healthy aging (reaching the age of 70 years while being devoid of chronic ailments, mental health conditions, loss of physical function, or subjective memory impairment). However, the effects of LPA on healthy aging have never been systematically evaluated.
Study: Sedentary Behaviors, Light-Intensity Physical Activity, and Healthy Aging . Image Credit: Studio Romantic / Shutterstock Using a sizeable female cohort (N = 45,176) with substantial follow-up (over 20 years), the current study highlights that while every two hours of daily television watching (sedentary behavior) resulted in a 12% reduction in odds of healthy aging, replacing this behavior with two hours of LPA increased these odds by 6% across all four domains of healthy aging. Notably, in individuals receiving less than seven hours of sleep daily, replacing even one hour of television time with sleep or MVPA achieved similar improvements in the probability of a long and healthy old age.
Extending human lifespan remains one of the highlights of modern medicine – advances in medical research and public accessibility have increased the aver.
