Walking for five minutes every half hour can reduce the risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.
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Walking for five minutes every half hour can reduce the risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.
Esch Collection/Getty Images
If you sit in front of your computer all day and then relax on the couch for more screen time in the evening, your health can take a hit. A body of evidence links sedentary lifestyles to an increased risk of diabetes, dementia and death from heart disease.
And here’s a red flag: a study found that whether or not a person exercised, if they sat for more than 12-13 hours a day, they were more than twice as likely to die prematurely. , compared to people who sat the least .
A new study reveals that you can reduce this risk with surprisingly low amounts of activity.
Columbia University Medical Center researcher Keith Diaz and his colleagues set out to find out what the less amount of physical activity a person needs to do to offset the health risks of sitting. They recruited volunteers to come into their lab and mimic a typical working day.
“They would come and sit for eight hours,” Diaz says. The volunteers were hooked up to continuous blood glucose monitors to measure blood sugar, and their blood pressure was also measured. Then, the participants took walking breaks of varying durations and frequencies.
“We found that a five-minute walk every half hour could offset much of the harm from sitting,” Diaz says.
Participants walked on a treadmill at a leisurely pace – about 1.9 miles per hour. “We were really struck by the power of the effects,” says Diaz. People who moved for five minutes every half hour saw their blood sugar spikes after a meal reduced by almost 60%.
“It surprises me,” says Robert Sallis, a family physician at Kaiser Permanente and former president of the American College of Sports Medicine. It’s well known that exercise can help control blood sugar, but he says what’s new here is how beneficial short, frequent movements can be.
“I’ve never seen this kind of drop in blood sugar, other than with medication,” Sallis says. He says he’s impressed with the results, which are published in a journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, Sports and exercise medicine and science.
More than one in three adults in the United States has prediabetes, and nearly half of adults have high blood pressure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Both conditions increase the risk of heart disease which is the leading cause of death in the United States. So, Sallis says many people can benefit from small, frequent movement breaks.
Each week, adults are advised to do 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity. The CDC says you can break this into smaller chunks, 30 minutes a day, five times a week for example, or even shorter breaks that are more frequent. “I think it’s easier to find smaller amounts of time to exercise,” Sallis says.
The walking pace in the study was probably too leisurely to be considered “moderate-intensity” for most people, but Loretta DiPietro, a professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health, says there are ways simple ways to increase intensity, including walking faster. “Add stairs,” she says. “Swing your arms,” which will help engage more muscles.
Another tip: put on some music, as the beat can make you pick up the pace. You can’t lose weight with short breaks, but “it’s a wonderful way to improve your metabolic profile,” says DiPietro, which is so essential to good health.
DiPietro was not involved in the new study, but his previous research has also shown that post-meal walks help improve blood sugar control.
She explains that the mechanism by which exercise leads to this benefit is well understood: When we exercise, our muscles need glucose – sugar – as a source of fuel. DiPietro says that when we contract our muscles, our body uses transport proteins GLUT4 which rise to the surface of the muscle cell and escort glucose molecules into the cell. Thus, physical activity helps remove glucose from the bloodstream into the muscle where it can be stored and used. And it helps lower blood sugar.
At a time when employers are looking for ways to retain workers, DiPietro says encouraging movement during the workday has clear benefits. “The human body was not designed to sit for eight hours straight,” says DiPietro. “What employers can do is give people options,” she says, such as encouraging walking meetings and promoting greater flexibility, which has become more common since the pandemic.
Employers should be aware that there’s another likely benefit to taking short, frequent breaks: “People were in a better mood because they took those breaks,” says Kathleen Janz, professor emeritus at the University of Iowa which focuses on health promotion. She reviewed the results of the new study for NPR and noted that study participants felt less fatigued.
It’s a reminder that moving our bodies during the workday isn’t a waste of time, says Janz. In fact, it could make us better workers and improve our health at the same time. “It can be a win-win,” says Janz.
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