When it comes to exercise, the best advice might be to work harder, not harder. Research published last weekend highlights the unique benefits of an impressive workout.
Scientists followed the long-term health of UK residents. People who spent more time engaging in vigorous physical activity during the week were significantly less likely to develop eight different chronic diseases and die earlier, the researchers found, even taking into account the total duration of people’s activity. They argue that regularly engaging in short periods of strenuous exercise, such as running after a bus, could have a big impact on people’s longevity.
“These findings support, whenever possible, prioritizing higher intensity activities in clinical and public health interventions aimed at preventing noncommunicable diseases,” they wrote in their paper. published Sunday in the European Heart Journal.
Why the type of exercise is important
Scientists already know that vigorous exercise, typically defined as any activity that leaves you breathless while doing it, tends to provide more health benefits per minute than lighter exercise. But according to the researchers, there is still some uncertainty about how these benefits accrue across different health conditions, as well as the relative importance between how long and how intensely someone exercises.
To get to the bottom of this, the team examined data from the UK Biobank, a long-running project that tracks the health of middle-aged residents in the country. A subset of Biobank volunteers were also asked to wear an accelerometer on their wrist for a week, allowing researchers to objectively measure a baseline of people’s physical activity. In total, they studied more than 300,000 people who reported their typical physical activity in a week, along with nearly 100,000 who had their activity tracked.
Compared with people who reported or did not engage in any vigorous activity, people who spent at least 4% or more of their weekly time doing something intense were less likely to develop these conditions over a seven-year follow-up period: major cardiovascular disease, liver disease, chronic kidney disease, chronic respiratory disease, immune-related inflammatory diseases, irregular heartbeat, type 2 diabetes, and dementia.
The greatest relative benefits were seen in dementia (63% less) and diabetes (60% less), while the most vigorous athletes were also 46% less likely to die during the study period. And exercise intensity compared to exercise duration appeared to be more correlated with a reduced risk of inflammatory disease, major cardiovascular disease, irregular heartbeat, and dementia. These findings indicate that vigorous exercise may especially help reduce harmful inflammation that contributes to these and other health problems.
Importantly, these patterns held even when looking at people who did about the same amount of physical activity in a week but at different levels of intensity, and even when people only did a small amount of vigorous exercise.
“Intensity consistently demonstrated greater preventive potential than total volume (of physical activity),” the researchers wrote.
What should this mean for your daily routine?
Researchers recognize that there are people who simply cannot increase their level of physical activity for a variety of reasons, such as advanced age or pre-existing health problems. And at the end of the day, any amount of regular exercise is better than none.
But for those who are willing and able to make the most of their day, intensity could be the trick they’re looking for. And it doesn’t necessarily have to take a long time to do so, researchers say.
“This doesn’t require going to the gym. Adding short bursts of activity that leaves you a little breathless into daily life, such as walking up the stairs quickly, walking briskly between errands, or actively playing with kids, can make a real difference,” study author Minxue Shen, a professor of public health at Central South University in Hunan, China, said in a statement. released by the European Society of Cardiology, the editors of the study. “Even 15 to 20 minutes per week of this type of effort (just a few minutes a day) was associated with significant health benefits.”
Personally speaking, this research will motivate me to try a little harder during my runs, at least some of the time.
