The findings align with conclusions from a separate study published in The Lancet, which examined the effects of small increases in daily movement
Making tiny, manageable changes to everyday routines—such as sleeping a few minutes longer or adding a short burst of movement—could significantly extend life expectancy, according to new research that highlights the powerful impact of combined lifestyle habits. A study published on Wednesday suggests that just five extra minutes of sleep and two minutes of moderate physical activity like brisk walking or climbing stairs may together add as much as one year to a person’s life.
The findings come from a large, long-term study that tracked around 60,000 people over eight years, examining how sleep, physical activity and diet interact to influence longevity and years lived in good health. The researchers found that even modest improvements across these three areas can have outsized benefits, especially for individuals with the poorest existing habits.
According to the study, adding half a serving of vegetables per day alone could help people with unhealthy sleep, activity and diet patterns gain an extra year of life. More broadly, individuals who consistently slept seven to eight hours a night, engaged in more than 40 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily, and followed a healthy diet were associated with more than nine additional years of life and healthy ageing.
Crucially, the researchers emphasised that lifestyle behaviours do not work in isolation. “The combined relationship of sleep, physical activity, and diet is larger than the sum of the individual behaviours,” the international research team from the UK, Australia, Chile and Brazil noted. They explained that relying on just one habit change is far less effective than making small improvements across multiple areas.
For instance, for people with the unhealthiest lifestyle patterns, gaining one extra year of life through sleep alone would require about 25 additional minutes of sleep per day. However, if sleep improvements were paired with small increases in physical activity and better diet choices, only five extra minutes of sleep per day would be needed to achieve the same benefit. This highlights how integrated lifestyle changes can amplify health outcomes.
The findings align with conclusions from a separate study published in The Lancet, which examined the effects of small increases in daily movement. Researchers from Norway, Spain and Australia found that adding just five minutes of extra walking to a daily routine could reduce the risk of death by about 10 per cent for the majority of adults. For the least active individuals, the same small increase in walking was linked to a roughly 6 per cent reduction in mortality risk.
That study, based on data from more than 135,000 adults, also explored the impact of reducing sedentary behaviour. The researchers found that cutting sedentary time by 30 minutes per day could lower overall deaths by an estimated 7 per cent if adopted by most adults, who typically spend around 10 hours a day sitting. Even among the most sedentary individuals—those sitting for about 12 hours daily—such a reduction could still decrease deaths by around 3 per cent.
“These estimates provide important evidence on the wide range of public health impacts associated with even small positive changes in physical activity and inactivity,” said Prof Ulf Ekelund of the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo, who was the corresponding author of the study.
However, the researchers cautioned against interpreting the findings as personalised medical advice. Instead, they stressed that the results are meant to demonstrate population-level benefits and the enormous potential of public health strategies that encourage small, realistic lifestyle changes.
Taken together, the studies reinforce a hopeful message: improving health and longevity does not necessarily require dramatic overhauls or extreme fitness regimes. Simple, achievable actions—sleeping a little longer, moving a little more, sitting a little less and eating slightly better—can collectively make a meaningful difference. At a time when many people struggle to sustain major lifestyle changes, the research suggests that even the smallest steps may help add not just years to life, but healthier years as well.
