Variation in Regular Physical Activities Best for Lower All-Cause Mortality

FRIDAY, Jan. 23, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Habitual engagement in a variety of physical activities is associated with lower mortality, according to a study published online Jan. 20 in BMJ Medicine.

Han Han, Ph.D., from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues used prospective data from the Nurses” Health Study (1986 to 2018; 70,725 women) and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (1986 to 2020; 40,742 men) to examine the associations between long-term engagement in individual physical activities and physical activity variety with the risk for death. Participants were free of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory disease, and neurological disease at baseline.

The researchers found that total physical activity and most individual physical activities, except for swimming, were associated with lower mortality, with nonlinear dose-response relationships. When comparing the highest categories of physical activity levels to the lowest, adjusted hazard ratios for all-cause mortality were 0.83 for walking, 0.89 for jogging, 0.87 for running, 0.96 for bicycling, 0.85 for tennis or squash, 0.90 for climbing stairs, 0.86 for rowing or calisthenics, and 0.87 for weight training or resistance exercises. Additionally, higher physical activity variety was associated with lower mortality. When adjusting for total physical activity levels, the group with the highest physical activity variety score had 19 percent lower all-cause mortality and 13 to 41 percent lower mortality from cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory disease, and other causes versus the lowest variety group.

“Overall, these data support the notion that long-term engagement in multiple types of physical activity may help extend the lifespan,” the authors write.

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