We all know — and we’ve reported on this many times — that sitting all day long is bad for your heart health.
But how much activity do you need? How much is required to make a difference?
As reported here, surprisingly little. “Replacing sitting with as little as a few minutes of moderate exercise a day tangibly improves heart health.”
In the study, supported by the British Heart Foundation, researchers analyzed data from six studies, involving over 15,000 people from five countries, “to see how movement behavior across the day is associated with heart health.” Each participant used a wearable device on their thigh “to measure their activity throughout the 24-hour day, and had their heart health measured.”
The researchers developed a hierarchy of beneficial behaviors. Moderate to vigorous activity came first, followed by light activity, followed by standing, followed by sleeping, and then sedentary behavior like sitting. (Yes, sleeping did better — which makes sense, because it enables rest and recovery).
“The team modeled what would happen if an individual changed various amounts of one behavior for another each day for a week, in order to estimate the effect on heart health for each scenario. When replacing sedentary behavior, as little as five minutes of moderate-vigorous activity had a noticeable effect on heart health.”
These relatively small amounts of activity produced noticeable outcomes: “For a 54-year-old woman with an average BMI of 26.5, for example, a 30-minute change translated into a 0.64 decrease in BMI, which is a difference of 2.4%. Replacing 30 minutes of daily sitting or lying time with moderate or vigorous exercise could also translate into a 2.5 cm (2.7%) decrease in waist circumference…”
The article quotes Dr. Jo Blodgett, first author of the study from UCL Surgery & Interventional Science and the Institute of Sport, Exercise & Health: “The big takeaway from our research is that while small changes to how you move can have a positive effect on heart health, intensity of movement matters. The most beneficial change we observed was replacing sitting with moderate to vigorous activity – which could be a run, a brisk walk, or stair climbing – basically any activity that raises your heart rate and makes you breathe faster, even for a minute or two.”