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Previous research had established that physical activity in general lowers the risk of many chronic diseases and that vigorous activity appears to have more health benefits per minute than moderate activity, but much of that research focused on cardiovascular benefits only.<\/p>\n
Even a little bit helps<\/p>\n
The new study, published March 29, found that people who spent the greatest proportion of their total physical activity doing vigorous activity (4% or more) had a 29% to 61% lower risk of eight chronic diseases, over the subsequent seven years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The steepest drop in risk occurred between the group that did no vigorous activity and the group one step above that (0% to 2%), which shows that doing even a little is significantly better than doing nothing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis hearkens to the, \u2018Get up off the couch\u2019 science done years ago\u00a0\u2014 that if you can just get the lowest activity level people up to anything, you get the most public health bang for your buck,\u201d said Dr. Jeffrey Christle, an exercise physiologist at Stanford Health Care who was not involved in the study.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What counts as \u2018vigorous\u2019<\/p>\n
The researchers defined \u201cvigorous activity\u201d as movement that got people breathless enough to have a hard time holding a full conversation. Vigorous is not exactly the same thing as high-intensity exercise (like HIIT, or high-intensity interval training), but there is some overlap. Vigorous activity is a broader category that includes HIIT as well as less structured activities done during daily life, like walking uphill or carrying groceries up stairs, Shen said.<\/p>\n
The study found that vigorous activity seemed to have more of an impact on lowering risk for inflammatory diseases in particular, like arthritis and psoriasis, than other diseases\u00a0\u2014 potentially because vigorous exercise has anti-inflammatory effects.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The eight chronic diseases studied were cardiovascular disease, irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation), Type 2 diabetes, immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (like rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and lupus), liver diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, chronic kidney disease and dementia. They were picked because they represent the major categories of non-infectious diseases that account for the leading causes of global health burdens.<\/p>\n
The study included about 96,000 adults aged 40 to 69 from the UK Biobank, one of the largest data sources for public health research. Participants wore accelerometers on their wrists to measure their movements.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The researchers divided study participants into four groups based on how much time they spent doing vigorous activity: more than 4% of their total physical activity, 2% to 4%, 0% to 2% and none. All groups did some activity, like walking or moving around the house, even if they did not do any vigorous activity. The more vigorous activity they did as a proportion of overall activity, the lower their risk of the chronic diseases, the analysis found.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No perfect exercise formula<\/p>\n
While the research adds new clues about the potential of vigorous exercise to lower disease risk, it leaves open the question of how much vigorous versus lower-intensity exercise people should strive for. For this, there is no magic ratio and depends on what your goals and baseline abilities are, experts said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe question of what\u2019s the best exercise has been around for years if not decades,\u201d said Dr. David Ding, chief of orthopedic surgery at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco and a team physician for the Golden State Warriors and Golden State Valkyries. \u201cIn general, we tell patients there\u2019s no one exercise, but everything in combination is probably the best exercise. A combination of aerobic and some strength training with vigorous exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Strength training, which can be with body weight, weights or resistance bands, is especially important as you age to maintain muscle mass and bone density, said Ding, who was not involved in the study.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYour goals just have to be to get some exercise, get your heart rate up a little bit everyday,\u201d he said. \u201cThat seems to be enough to prevent some of these diseases.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
For people who are already fit and trying to maximize their limited workout time, doing shorter periods of high-intensity exercise should reap slightly stronger benefits because of the anti-inflammatory effects, Christle said. Generally speaking, 10 minutes of high-intensity exercise can provide similar benefits as 25 to 30 minutes of moderate exercise, depending on the intensity, he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe recommendation for your average person who wants to exercise for their health and maybe a little for fitness and a little for aesthetics, is to exercise at the highest heart rate that\u2019s tolerable for a relatively long period of time,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the best way you get the most efficiency out of your workout.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Participants sprint up a staircase in the November Project fitness workout at the Presidio in San Francisco on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[64,63,538,137],"class_list":["post-677823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fitness","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}