Running for as little as five minutes per day lowers a person’s risk of dying from cardiovascular-related issues compared to a person who does not run.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 17.3 million people died from cardiovascular disease (CVD) in 2008, and it’s estimated that more than 23 million people will die every year from CVD by the year 2030.

Exercise has long been known to have a positive effect on a person’s cardiovascular health, but it was not clear whether exercising below the recommended time of 75 minutes per week at a moderate intensity as per guidelines from the U.S. government and the WHO had any effect on the heart.

In a new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 55,137 adults from 18 to 100 years of age were analyzed over a 15 year period to determine whether there is a link between running and longevity. Participants of the study completed a questionnaire about their running activity.

The data, which was gathered from the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, identified that 3,413 participants had died over this study time period, including 1,217 deaths that were the result of heart disease. Only 24 percent of the participants who died reported running as part of their habits.

Lead study author DC (Duck-chul) Lee, Ph.D., and an assistant professor in the Iowa State University Kinesiology Department in Ames, Iowa, and colleagues discovered that the participants who ran under six miles at a pace slower than six miles per hour only once or twice per week were less likely to die from cardiovascular disease compared to those who do not run at all.

“Running may be a better exercise option than more moderate intensity exercises for healthy but sedentary people since it produces similar, if not greater, mortality benefits in five to 10 minutes compared to the 15 to 20 minutes per day of moderate intensity activity that many find too time consuming,” said Lee in a statement.