A new study by the University of Sydney suggests that you will improve your life expectancy considerably if you exercise more. It suggests that if you can manage 9-10,000 steps per day, you will live longer than sedentary people by quite a lot. The importance of movement for longevity seems to drop off after that amount of steps, at least for older people. I recall an earlier study suggested optimum medium exercise for longevity for everyone including older and younger people was 2 hours per day. Anyway, the full article on the Uni of Sydney research, from New Scientist, is reproduced here: "Walking 10,000 steps a day really does seem to make us healthier The much-touted advice to take 10,000 steps a day for our health has been accused of lacking evidence, but new research suggests that hitting this target has serious benefits By Chris Stokel-Walker 5 March 2024 New Scientist Default Image Walking 9000 to 10,000 steps a day appears to help ward off an early death and heart-related events Taking between 9000 and 10,000 steps per day appears to reduce the risk of an early death or heart-related event, adding legitimacy to an idea that has been criticised as unscientific. The exact origin of the commonly held belief that people should aim for 10,000 steps a day is unclear, but it has been linked to a marketing campaign promoting pedometers in Japan. Now, a study by Matthew Ahmadi at the University of Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues suggests the figure could hold some merit. The team analysed more than 72,000 participants, with an average age of 61, in the UK Biobank study as they wore a movement-tracking accelerometer on their wrists for one week. “We were able to quantify daily steps,” says Ahmadi. The participants were then tracked for an average of just under seven years, during which time 1633 people died and 6190 heart disease-related events occurred. After adjusting for other factors that could influence the risk of illness or death over that period – such as diet quality, smoking status and doing other forms of exercise – the researchers calculated that the optimal number of steps per day appears to be between 9000 and 10,000, with the benefits then starting to tail off."