If almost all of us started walking for an extra 10 minutes a day, we could, collectively, prevent more than 111,000 deaths every year, according to an enlightening new study of movement and mortality. Published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine, the study used data about physical activity and death rates for thousands of American adults to estimate how many deaths every year might be averted if everyone exercised more. The results indicate that even a little extra physical activity by each of us could potentially stave off hundreds of thousands of premature deaths over the coming years.

Already, science offers plenty of evidence that how much we exercise influences how long we live. In a telling 2019 study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 8 percent of all deaths in the United States were attributed to “inadequate levels of activity.” A British study from 2015 likewise found that men and women who exercised for at least 150 minutes per week — the standard recommendation in Britain, Europe and the United States — reduced their risk of premature death by at least 25 percent compared to people who exercised less. More dramatically, a 2020 examination of the lifestyles and death risks of about 44,000 adults in the United States and Europe concluded that the most sedentary men and women in the study, who sat almost all day, were as much as 260 percent more likely to die prematurely as the most highly active people studied, who exercised for at least 30 minutes most days.