Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, published a study in August that found moderate workouts can add a year to life expectancy. Benefits of working out 15 minutes per day applied to all age groups, both sexes and those with cardiovascular disease.

The study investigated whether it is possible to receive health benefits from leisure-time physical activity while doing less exercise than the 150 minutes per week recommended by previous studies. The study acknowledged that people sometimes do not exercise for reasons like insufficient time and lack of knowledge of how long and vigorously they must work out to be healthy.

Kevin Davis, owner of EcoFit, 2251 W. Taylor St.,believes that when doing a 15-minute workout, the more intense the exercise is, the more beneficial the workout will be. He recommends running 200 meters as well as performing 10 sit-ups, 10 push-ups and 10 squats as many times as possible in 15 minutes.

“[The study’s] purpose was to justify telling people to do as little as possible,” said Davis.

The study determined that people can further reduce all-cause mortality (death by any means) by 4 percent and all-cancer mortality (death by cancer) by 1 percent for every additional 15 minutes of daily exercise beyond the minimum amount. People who were inactive had a 17 percent increased risk of mortality compared with individuals in the low-volume exercise group.

Between 1996 and 2008, 416,175 healthy individuals 20 years and older participated in a standard medical screening program in Taiwan. The study was conducted over a 13-year period and resulted in 3.35 million years of follow-up.

A questionnaire on medical history and lifestyle was completed by each participant. Each subject was encouraged to check in on a yearly basis, but the average follow up was approximately eight years. The same questionnaire was filled out during every visit. Dr. Chi Pang Wen and her colleagues used the first questionnaire for the results of the study.

Each individual was placed into one of five categories based on the participants’ self-evaluation: inactive, low, medium, high or very high activity. “Low activity” is equivalent to walking while “very high activity” is running.

Also taken into consideration was the person’s leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) level. This level was calculated through three multiple-choice questions. The first classified the types of exercise along with intensity of weekly LTPAs the subjects performed in the month leading up to the study.

The second asked how long they spent on the different LTPAs during the same month, and the third investigated how much physical activity they did at work. Then, the subjects of the study were categorized according to four different activity levels.

The study calculated hazard ratios to compare mortality risks between individuals in different exercise groups and found that, compared with individuals in the inactive group, those in the low-volume activity group, who exercised for an average of 92 minutes per week, had a three-year longer life expectancy.

“Basically the conclusion [of the study] is 15 minutes is better than nothing,” Davis said. “The more you do, the better.”