You don’t necessarily have to hit the gym every day, eat kale at every meal, or get eight hours of sleep every night to make a difference in your health — taking baby steps in all three areas may still move you forward.
A study found that, in combination, eating just a few more veggies, spending a little more time snoozing, and getting a couple more minutes of exercise each day were associated with longer life and better health for people with poor health habits.
“These findings highlight the importance of considering lifestyle behaviors as a package rather than in isolation,” lead study author Nick Koemel, a dietitian and research fellow at the University of Sydney, told CNN. “By targeting small improvements across multiple behaviors simultaneously, the required change for any single behavior is substantially reduced, which may help overcome common barriers to long-term behavior change.”
Using data from nearly 60,000 participants in the UK Biobank, with an average follow-up span of around eight years, Koemel and his colleagues sought to determine the minimum combined improvements needed for a longer lifespan and a longer health span. Health span refers to the number of years spent free from significant chronic disease, including cancer, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and dementia.
By the numbers, just five minutes of extra sleep, 1.9 minutes of extra exercise, and a half-serving of extra vegetables or 1.5 extra servings of whole grains per day were associated with one additional year of life — but this predicted outcome only applied to those who had very poor health habits to begin with.
The researchers used people in the fifth percentile of health behaviors (meaning their habits were worse than 95% of participants) as a reference point. These people slept under six hours a night, got around seven minutes of exercise a day, and scored under 40 out of 100 on a measure of daily nutrition.
For health span, a combined 24 minutes of added sleep, 3.7 minutes of exercise, and a 23-point increase in nutrition score each day were associated with four more years for people in that same cohort. The 23-point increase could be achieved by eating an additional 1 cup of vegetables and one serving of whole grains per day and two servings of fish per week, for example.
It’s important to note that the study had its limitations, including self-reported diets, which are often inaccurate, and the brief time period that sleep and exercise data were recorded (one seven-day period during which participants wore fitness trackers). The statistical and theoretical nature of the study also makes it difficult to draw any definite conclusions.
“All of the gains reported in this study are theoretical,” Koemel explained to CNN. “We cannot claim a direct causal effect from the lifestyle patterns. These findings should therefore be interpreted as expected or projected benefits under assumed behavioral variations, rather than confirmed effects of an intervention.”
Dr. David D’Alessio, chief of the division of endocrinology, metabolism, and nutrition at the Duke University School of Medicine, who wasn’t involved in the research, told NBC News that diet, sleep, and exercise “would need to be tested in an interventional way to be able to say little bits really do make a difference.”
Still, many medical professionals encourage making small changes to start improving health, rather than not taking any steps toward betterment at all.
“All those tiny behaviors we change can actually have a very meaningful impact, and they add up over time to make a big difference in our longevity,” said Koemel.
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