I might offer more vigorous daily activities — such as going for a short walk — to people who don’t exercise for some of the health benefits that exercisers have.
That’s according to a new study of nearly 25,000 adults who reported no exercise in their free time. Those who incorporated three loaded to two-minute bursts of intense activity throughout the day saw a nearly 40 percent drop in the risk of death from any cause compared to those whose days did not include such activity. The risk of death from cancer also fell by nearly 40 percent, and the risk of death from cardiovascular disease fell by nearly 50 percent, researchers report online Dec. 8 Nature Medicine.
In comparison with about 62,000 people who exercised regularly, including runners, sportsmen and recreational cyclists, the reduction in mortality risk was similar.
“This study adds to other literature showing that even short amounts of activity are beneficial,” says Lisa Cadmus-Bertram, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not involved in the research. “So many people are terrified of feeling that they don’t have the time, money, motivation, transportation, etc. to go to the gym regularly or work out for long hours,” she says. “We can take the message that it’s absolutely worth doing what you can.”
Emmanuel Stamatakis, an epidemiologist at the University of Sydney, and his colleagues highlighted the wealth of records in the UK Biobank, a biomedical database containing health information on half a million people in the United Kingdom. The non-exercising study participants – more than half of whom were women and were on average 62 years old – wore movement tracking machines for a week.
Over an average of seven years, for those whose days included three to four outbreaks of activity, the mortality rate was 4.2 deaths from any cause per 1,000 people in one year. For these, when no action breaks out, there are 10.4 deaths per 1,000 people for one year.
The researchers were looking for a burst of vigorous activity that met the definition determined in the laboratory study, in which they reach at least 77 percent of maximum heart rate and at least 64 percent of maximum oxygen consumption. In real life, the signs that someone has reached a more intense level are “feeling a pounding heart and shortness of breath” in the first 15 to 30 seconds of the activity, says Stamatakis.
These, he says, break the daily routine of opportunities. “The simplest step is to walk for a minute or two on every regular walk.” Other options, he says, include grocery bags for parking or taking the stairs. “The biggest gains in human health will be made by finding ways to get the least physically active people to move a little.”
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