What else?

People are encouraged to take the stairs whenever there’s the opportunity, because every bit of exercise helps, according to a new study. (Shutterstock)

There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there about how much exercise is enough to stay healthy. Should you exercise three to four times a week, run a marathon or do a seven-minute workout with an app from the comforts of your living room?

It turns out they all work — even ditching the elevator for the stairwell — to help reduce your risk of disease and premature death, according to new research from the United States.

“Everything counts,” said William Kraus, a cardiologist at North Carolina’s Duke University School of Medicine and senior author of a new study published last week in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The epidemiological study looked at the relative benefits of “bouted” versus sporadic moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) on the mortality of 4,840 people who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2003-06.

Click here to read the entire article originally published by CBC News.