To maximize your lifespan you need to exercise TWICE as the guidelines suggest –

The exercise guidelines set by U.S. health officials—indicators that the vast majority of Americans fail to meet—are still insufficient for a person looking to maximize their lifespan, a new study finds.

Researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts found that meeting the guidelines set by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 2018 is probably not enough. If a person wanted to minimize their risk of all-cause death, they would likely have to double or quadruple their requirements every week.

The HHS recommends that every American adult get at least 2.5 hours of aerobic exercise each week, or only half if the activities are vigorous.

However, Americans are already largely failing to comply with these guidelines. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced earlier this week that only half of Americans achieve their fitness score.

The sedentary lifestyle has greatly contributed to America’s problems with diet-related ailments. The CDC reports that over 70% of Americans are overweight and over 40% are obese. Just over ten percent have diabetes, and heart disease continued to be the number one human killer in the United States, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reaching aerobic fitness goals each week has been invaluable, especially in preventing death from heart disease.

Presenting the Tuesday Circulation findings, the researchers collected data from 116,221 adults between 1988 and 2018. Data came from the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

Each of the participants filled out a questionnaire about their weekly and daily physical activities. They were then monitored periodically up to 15 times to measure their health or if they died at some point during the study period.

Fewer than 50,000 participants died at some point during the follow-up period. Those who regularly achieved the two-and-a-half hour fitness goal reduced their all-cause mortality rate by 19%.

Fitness is especially valuable against heart disease because meeting goals can reduce the death rate from this condition by up to 31%. Aerobic exercise alone reduces the risk of death from another condition by 15 percent.

However, those who are particularly interested in prolonging their life or avoiding heart disease should go further with their exercise regimen.

The research team found that those who doubled the HHS guidelines for weekly aerobic fitness reduced their risk of death by up to 29%.

If someone quadruples their recommendations, that is, exercises for ten hours each week, they reduce their risk of death from all causes by about 40%.

However, reaching it is an ambitious goal, as it requires around 90 minutes of exercise each day.

In America, even reaching the baseline of 150 minutes a week, about 20 minutes a day, has become a challenge for many.

A report by the CDC on Tuesday found that only 46.9 percent of American adults have reached this milestone.

Men were more likely to reach this mark. Adults aged 18 to 34 of both sexes were more likely to meet their educational goals.

CDC research found that only 24 percent of U.S. adults met weekly exercise recommendations, and only half met both requirements.

Among both men and women, 18-34-year-olds were more likely to make exercise recommendations, and fitness rates decline in older age groups.

The CDC survey also included HHS markers for strength training, which recommend that a person perform activities that work the muscles of the whole body at least two days a week.

Together, only 24% of adults achieved both goals.

Although the gap between white, Asian and black men was very narrow, they were all reduced by about 30 percent.

According to the survey, only 23.5 percent of Hispanic men achieved their physical activity goals each week.

Racial segregation was much more pronounced among women. 24.3 percent of white women had set markers, while 18 percent or less of black, Hispanic, or Asian women had it.

Income also played an important role, as people with family income were twice as likely to meet the goals as those below the threshold.