Three tiny changes could make you live longer, per new research
They take less than 20 mintues but could slash your risk of premature death by at least 10 per cent.
Moderated by Tomas Kauer 
New research suggests Australians who make three tiny, combined changes to their daily routines could live longer.
A University of Sydney study found that the risk of premature death was slashed by at least 10 per cent in people who made three small combined changes to their sleep, diet and exercise.
Those changes were to sleep at least an extra 15 minutes, perform an extra 1.6 minutes of "moderate-to-vigorous" physical exercise, and eat an extra half-serving of vegetables every day.
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When performed together, those small daily behaviours could provide better long-term health outcomes, reduce the risk of premature mortality and increase an individual's lifespan according to the study.
Co-lead researcher Dr Nicholas Koemel said the research suggests it's more beneficial for individuals to focus on making small combined changes, rather than attempting larger changes to one single behaviour like diet or exercise.
Smaller changes tend to be more sustainable and, when maintained, could provide long-term health benefits.
"The findings suggest that focusing on combined small changes across multiple behaviours may offer a more powerful and sustainable strategy to improve health outcomes than targeting larger changes in an individual behaviour," Koemel said.
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Co-author Professor Emmanual Stamatakis agreed, adding that it takes much more effort to reduce mortality with a single, large change in behaviour compared to small, combined changes.
"When compared to combined behaviours, substantially greater relative increases in individual behaviours were required to achieve a 10 per cent lower risk of mortality," he said.
"For example, as individual behaviours this level of risk reduction required 60 per cent more sleep, 25 per cent more physical activity, while diet alone was unable to reach a 10 per cent lower mortality risk in isolation."
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The study used data from UK Biobank, a biomedical database and research resource in the UK, which tracked more than 59,000 participants over eight years.
Participants wore health trackers for seven days to monitor sleep and physical activity, and provided self-reported dietary data.
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