Here’s the thing about living longer – it only sounds appealing if you’re going to be healthy all the way up until the end.

If it’s something you think you’d like to buy into, though, here is a hack scientists say could help you live a longer life – and it’s pretty simple, too.

The downside?

You’re going to have to get up off your couch to put it into practice.

New research shows that US adults over the age of 40 can add a whole five years to their lives by exercising as much as the top 25% of the population. This study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, underscores what we already know – that exercise is a necessity if you wish to stay healthy later into your life.

“The findings suggest that physical activity provides substantially larger health benefits than previously thought, which is due to the use of more precise means of measuring it.”

The researchers pulled activity tracker data from a national health survey for people over 40, population data, and end of life records in 2017.

The amount of recommended exercise is equal to walking at a good clip for around 160 minutes every day to achieve the result – a life expectancy of 84 years instead of 78.6.

This is an observational study, which means cause and effect can’t be definitively proven. Even so, there is not a doctor, researchers, or health professional on this earth who wouldn’t support the idea that more exercise equals better health in just about every case.

Researchers on this study believe that an entire change in the way cities are laid out could have a huge impact on people getting those steps in every single day.

“Infrastructure measures that encourage active transport, walkable neighborhoods, as well as green spaces might be promising approaches to increase physical activity and resultant healthy life expectancy at the population level.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just snap our fingers and make being active easier?

In the meantime, you’ll just have to figure out how to find the time yourself – if you want those five extra years, of course.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a quantum computer simulation that has “reversed time” and physics may never be the same.