(RxWiki News) Household chores, washing the dog, taking the stairs and all other kinds of physical activity may reduce your risk of death, according to a new study.

Any exercise that meets the current guidelines — 30 minutes a day or 150 minutes a week — may reduce your risk of heart disease and death, this study found. That may mean you don't necessarily have to hit the gym to stay healthy.

Although past studies have produced similar results, this study included participants from lower-income nations that hadn't been included in much past research.

"By including low and middle-income countries in this study, we were able to determine the benefit of activities such as active commuting, having an active job or even doing housework," said principal study author Dr. Scott Lear, of McMaster University, in a press release.

This study looked at more than 130,000 people from 17 countries. Regardless of what kind of physical activity participants engaged in, if they met current activity guidelines, their risk of dying decreased by 28 percent. For heart disease risk, that figure was 20 percent.

The authors of this study noted that exceeding exercise guidelines appeared to have even more beneficial effects.

Ask your health care provider for help incorporating exercise into your daily life.

This study was published in The Lancet.

McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Ontario SPOR Support and various pharmaceutical companies funded this research. Information on potential conflicts of interest was not available at the time of publication.