Physical activity and mortality - ”The least active quartile did less than 5 minute per day”

We know that exercise is good for you - the WHO recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity aerobic physical activity each week. That recommendation is built on evidence that relied on self reporting that may underestimate the amount of lower intensity exercise those people were doing, and at the sometime overestimate the overall amount. That makes new research, published on bmj.com particularly interesting - it pulls together the published data on outcomes for measured activity, where study participants were given an accelerometer to wear. Ulf Ekelund, from the Department of Sports Medicine at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, joins us to discuss what they found, and what that means for those recommendations. Read the open access research: https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l4570