Office workers, rejoice: just 22 minutes of physical activity per day is enough to offset the increased risk of death associated with a highly sedentary lifestyle.
This is based on New research published Tuesday inside British Journal of Sports Medicine. Researchers analyzed 16 years of health and activity tracking data from nearly 12,000 people aged 50 or older from Norway, Sweden and the United States. The group is almost equally divided between men and women.
Researchers found that participants who sat for 12 hours or more a day had a 38% higher risk of death than those who sat for 8 hours a day.
However, as levels of moderate to vigorous exercise increased, the rate of increased risk decreased. Researchers found that just 10 minutes of such activity a day reduced the risk of death by 35 percent, while doing it for 22 minutes or more eliminated the risk entirely.
They found that mild physical activity also protected against death, but only in sedentary people.
“Low amounts of moderate to vigorous physical activity may be an effective strategy to reduce the risk of mortality associated with longer periods of sitting,” the researchers concluded.
A word of caution, though: Because this study was observational, cause-and-effect relationships cannot be determined. Factors such as diet, mobility problems and general health were not taken into account. The researchers wrote that activity trackers used by study participants may not recognize certain types of physical activity, such as bicycling, resistance exercises and gardening.
Use “sports snacks” to combat the effects of “sitting syndrome”
In the United States, adults spend Sitting for 9.5 hours a day, on average – usually while they’re at work. Due to technological developments, sedentary jobs have increased by 83% since 1950. This resulted in revenue growth of $117 billion. annual health costs.
Some medical professionals refer to the range of negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle as “sedentary syndrome”. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the longer a person sits, the higher the risk of the following health complications:
- heart disease
- obesity
- hypertension
- high cholesterol
- type 2 diabetes
- cancer
According to one person, one way to fight back is to Study in 2023 Researchers at Columbia University proposed walking for 5 minutes for every 30 minutes of sitting as a “sports snack.”
Brisk sprints performed by study participants on a treadmill significantly reduced blood sugar and blood pressure, which are key indicators of cardiometabolic health. This “snack” can also reduce the blood sugar spike caused by a large meal by 58% compared with those who sit and do not exercise all day.
The researchers tested various other “exercise snacks,” including walking one minute for every 30 minutes of sitting and walking one minute for every 60 minutes of sitting. While the former offers some benefits in lowering blood sugar throughout the day, the latter does not. However, the researchers said that when it came to blood pressure, all of the snacks tested provided significant benefits.
Based on a standard 8-hour workday, eat a 5-minute exercise snack every half hour for a total of 1 hour and 20 minutes of walking per day. That’s well beyond the 22-minute minimum recommended by the latest research. But one thing is clear: When it comes to exercise and its positive effects on health, every little bit helps.
When it comes to how many steps you should take each day, the common answer is 10,000 steps. But according to an August article in Science, 8,000 steps a day, three days a week, is enough to reduce the risk of death. European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
The study’s authors said people who walked fewer than 5,000 steps a day had a sedentary lifestyle, which they called a “disease of the 21st century.”
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