The message is clear from a recent study: older adults should get out and move, move , move (brisk walking is fine) - to lower the risk of early death. The older women engaging in the most moderate to vigorous activity had a 65% lower risk of early death during an average follow-up period of 2.3 years (when compared to the women with the least exercise).
How much exercise did the groups get? The least active had 6.8 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous exercise, and the most active had about 68 minutes/day of moderate to vigorous physical activity. The women wore a Fitbit type of device (an accelerometer) that measured their movements. Moderate to vigorous exercise was any movement that got the heart rate up a bit, made them sweat a little - and which could be brisk walking.
The study was done with older women (in their 70s), but one would think it also applies to men. Note: all-cause mortality means death from any cause (death in general). From Medscape:
Intense Exercise Tied to 65% Lower Death Risk in Older Women
Older women who engaged in the greatest amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity, such as brisk walking, were found to have a 65% lower risk of all-cause mortality compared with women who performed the least amount of such exercise, a new study reports. The researchers examined women in their early 70s in the Women's Health Study (WHS) who wore a triaxial accelerometer for 7 days to measure physical activity. The findings, by Dr I-Min Lee (Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA) and colleagues, were published November 6, 2017 in Circulation.
It's been known for a long time that physical activity is associated with lower mortality rates, Dr Lee told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.... Now that physical activity can be better measured using a research-grade triaxial accelerometer, the magnitude of the reduced risk of short-term death with recommended amounts of moderate to vigorous physical activity can be seen to be as strong as not smoking, Lee said. ... This study "reinforces the message that adults should strive to meet physical activity guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week," Dr Alpa Patel (American Cancer Society, Atlanta, Georgia) who recently published a related article that showed benefits from walking told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.
From 2011 to 2015, 18,289 of 29,494 living women (63%) in the Women's Health Study agreed to participate in the current study.... The remaining 17,708 women were mailed a research-grade triaxial accelerometer (ActiGraph GT3X+, ActiGraph Corp) and asked to wear it on their hips for 7 days (but to take it off when sleeping or swimming) and then mail it back.
The women spent a median of 8.4, 5.8, and 0.5 hours/day being sedentary, doing light physical activity, and doing moderate to vigorous physical activity, respectively. "The least active quartile were doing 8 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous . . . physical activity," Lee said, which was typically "brisk walking, anything that gets your heart rate up a little bit, gets you to sweat a little bit." The most active quartile did about 68 minutes/day of moderate to vigorous physical activity. During an average follow-up of 2.3 years, 207 women died. The total amount of physical activity was inversely related to the risk of all-cause mortality during follow-up, after adjustment for age and time spent wearing the device.