Doing 30 minutes of daily exercise five days a week seems like a mantra, a minimum, to maintain good cardiovascular health and prolong life. However, this magic number depends on how your life is.
If your life is very sedentary, even doing that exercise daily, you will hardly notice any benefits, as suggested by a new study from Columbia University and an international team of researchers.
More than 11 hours sitting: no effect on mortality
Using data from six studies involving more than 130,000 adults in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Sweden, the authors used a technique called composition analysis to determine how different combinations of activities, including moderate to vigorous exercise (such as walking, fast, running or other activities that increase the heart rate), light physical activity (such as housework or occasional walking), and sedentary behavior all affect mortality .
Here are the main takeaways:
- The benefits of 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise depend on how you spend the rest of the day.
- Although the current recommendation of 30 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous physical activity reduced the chances of an earlier death by as much as 80% for some (those who sat for less than 7 hours), it did not reduce the risk of mortality for women. people who were very sedentary (more than 11 to 12 hours per day) .
- People who spent only a few minutes engaging in moderate to vigorous physical activity reduced their risk of premature death by 30% as long as they also spent six hours engaging in light physical activity.
- Taking three minutes of moderate to vigorous activity or 12 minutes of light activity per hour of sitting was optimal for improving health and reducing the risk of premature death.
What is currently recommended, then, is 30 minutes of physical activity a day, or 150 minutes a week, but you still have the possibility of wasting all that good work if you sit too long .