Physical activity has been sold as the closest thing to a longevity cheat code. Sweat enough, they say, and the Reaper keeps his distance. But Finnish researchers just threw a wrench in that tidy little narrative, and their data comes from a source you can’t argue with—twins.
Scientists at the University of Jyväskylä sifted through the lives (and deaths) of 22,750 Finnish twins born before 1958, tracking their exercise habits over 15 years and their mortality for another 30. If exercise were the holy grail of lifespan extension, the results should have been clear. Instead, they were weird.
Moderate Exercise Wins—But Only Barely
The study carved participants into four groups: couch-dwellers, moderately active types, energetic exercisers, and the fitness-obsessed. If the common wisdom held up, the most active should have lived the longest. They didn’t.
The best longevity boost—just a 7% lower risk of death—belonged to those who moved from sedentary to moderately active. Beyond that, extra activity didn’t add years. And in the long-term data, the ultra-fit and the completely inactive had roughly the same mortality rates. Turns out, grinding through endless miles or lifting heavier every week won’t make you immortal.
Associate Professor Elina Sillanpää suspects we’ve been confusing cause and effect. “An underlying pre-disease state can limit physical activity and ultimately lead to death, not the lack of exercise itself,” she explains. In other words, people may not die early because they skipped the gym—they may have skipped the gym because they were already on the decline.
WHO Exercise Guidelines? Irrelevant.
The World Health Organization has clear recommendations: 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity per week, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous exercise. Logical assumption? Hitting those numbers should guarantee a longer life. Reality? Not so much.
Even twins who followed the WHO guidelines religiously showed no meaningful difference in mortality from their lazier siblings. Their genetic disease risks remained unchanged, too. Postdoctoral researcher Laura Joensuu puts it bluntly: “The widely observed favorable association between physical activity and mortality comes from observational studies that are prone to bias.” Translation: We’ve been putting way too much faith in studies that confuse correlation with causation.
So, Is Exercise Pointless?
Not quite. Moving enough to keep your body functioning well still matters—just don’t expect it to rewrite your DNA or outmaneuver your genetic fate. The real lesson from this twin study? Avoid being completely sedentary, but don’t assume that more is always better.
If immortality’s what you’re after, you’ll have to wait for the biotech industry to crack that code. In the meantime, maybe spend less time agonizing over step counts and more time enjoying the life you’ve got.
Did You Know?
- Ultra-marathoners have been found to develop heart scarring despite their insane fitness levels. Sometimes, too much cardio really is a bad thing.
- The world record for longest plank is over 9 hours. Congratulations, you outlasted mortality for half a workday.
- NASA has studied the effects of space travel on identical twins, with one staying on Earth while the other lived in orbit. The biggest difference? The space twin aged slightly slower—but also suffered genetic changes.
