"Adding  minutes of moderate exercise per week is associated with improvements in overall physical functioning and decreases in risks of immobility in older adults who are sedentary finds a new study led by researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging USDA HNRCA at Tufts University.  In the study published in PLOS ONE on Aug.  the researchers evaluated how different doses of exercise for adults age  would impact the benefits. While the researchers saw improvements in all participants who added some physical activity to their routine those who got more exercise saw greater changes. The work is part of the Lifestyle Interventions and Independence for Elders LIFE study.  These are people who want to live healthy independent lives and are at risk for losing that. Maintaining functional independence for older adults is an important public health issue. In our first LIFE study we confirmed that regular exercise can help improve physical function and prevent mobility loss. Now we see that small increases can have big impacts said first and corresponding author Roger A. Fielding senior scientist and director of the Nutrition Exercise Physiology and Sarcopenia Laboratory at the USDA HNRCA.  For the LIFE study the researchers analyzed data from  men and women age  over an average of . years. Half were randomly assigned to a program of walking and walkingbased strength flexibility and balance training half participated in health education workshops. All had low levels of physical functioning at the start and reported fewer than  minutes per week of regular physical activity in the month prior to starting the study. Participants were evaluated at baseline six  and  months. The researchers relied on movement monitors and selfreporting to measure physical activity outside study sessions.  Changes in activity were significantly greater in the physical activity intervention group than the health education group from baseline through  months. There was a continuous graded effect with the greatest benefits seen in the participants who engaged in at least  minutes of physical activity per week. The greater differences were also associated with prevention of major mobility loss.  Our goal was to have participants walking up to  minutes per week. To see benefits at  minutes is encouraging. We wanted the physical activity sessions to include exercise that participants could do outside of the study and we hope that learning of these results might motivate others to try to make safe incremental changes to their activity levels. Reducing muscle loss functional decline and loss of independence are important to anyone at any age and at any physical ability said Fielding.  The researchers acknowledge limitations of this study including examining the different quantities of exercise participation achieved in the LIFE study participants and not specifically prescribing different amounts of exercise to different study groups. In addition there were differences in the measured absolute amounts of exercise performed when comparing objective activity monitoring using a wearable device and selfreport of physical activity. Additional authors on this study are Jack M. Guralnik of the University of Maryland School of Medicine Abby C. King of Stanford University Medical School Marco Pahor of the University of Florida College of Medicine Mary M. McDermott of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Catrine TudorLocke of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Pennington Biomedical Research Center Todd M. Manini of the University of Florida College of Medicine Nancy W. Glynn of the Center for Aging and Population Health Graduate School of Public Health University of Pittsburgh Anthony P. Marsh of Wake Forest University Robert S. Axtell of Southern Connecticut State University FangChi Hsu of Wake Forest School of Medicine and W. Jack Rejeski of the Center for Aging and Population Health Graduate School of Public Health University of Pittsburgh. The Lifestyle Interventions and Independence for Elders Study is supported by a National Institutes of HealthNational Institute on Aging Cooperative Agreement UAG and a supplement from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute UAGAS and sponsored in part by the Intramural Research Program National Institute on Aging National Institutes of Health. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The research is partially supported by the Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Centers at the University of Florida PAG Wake Forest University PAG Tufts University PAG University of Pittsburgh PAG and Yale University PAG and the NIHNCRR CTSA at Stanford University ULRR. Tufts University is also supported by the Boston Rehabilitation Outcomes Center RHDA. Dr. Roger Fielding Tufts University is partially supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture under agreement No. . Any opinions findings conclusion or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. For conflicts of interest disclosure please see the study. Fielding R.A. Guralnik J.M. King A.C. Pahor M. McDermott M.M. TudorLocke C. et al.  August  Dose of physical activity physical functioning and disability risk in mobilitylimited older adults Results from the LIFE study randomized trial. PLOS ONE  e. httpsdoi.org.journal.pone. About the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University For three decades the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University has studied the relationship between good nutrition and good health in aging populations. Tufts research scientists work with federal agencies to establish the Dietary Guidelines the Dietary Reference Intakes and other significant public policies. The Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University is the only independent school of nutrition in the United States. The schools eight degree programs which focus on questions relating to nutrition and chronic diseases molecular nutrition agriculture and sustainability food security humanitarian assistance public health nutrition and food policy and economics are renowned for applying scientific research to national and international policy."