According to a study published this Tuesday, small bursts of physical activity throughout the day, no matter how small, can help the heart, especially in the case of women.
The study, published in the journal British Journal of Sports Medicinefound that in people who didn’t exercise, these short bursts of vigorous activity in everyday life, like carrying shopping bags to the car or walking up a flight of stairs, can have a big effect on heart disease risk.
The research adds to a growing body of evidence showing that even small amounts of exercise are good for your health. And they can be especially beneficial, according to experts, in the United States, where about a quarter of Americans do not do any physical activity outside of work, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, in English).
“The big takeaway is that it doesn’t matter how you exercise, all that matters is that you exercise more,” said Dr. Meagan Wasfy, a sports cardiologist at Mass General Brigham in Boston, who was not involved in the new study.
The research analyzed data from around 22,000 people aged 40 to 69 from the UK Biobank who were self-proclaimed “non-athletes”. They all wore an activity tracker for a week from 2013 to 2015. On average, the men in the study had 11 short bursts of vigorous activity during the day, some of which lasted less than a minute, and the women experienced about nine. . According to Emmanuel Stamatakis, professor of Physical Activity, Lifestyle and Population Health at the University of Sydney, who led the study, the vigorous activity was high intensity.
Next, The researchers looked for cases of myocardial infarctionheart failure or stroke until November 2022. A relatively small number of people – about 800 – suffered from one of these serious heart problems during the follow-up period. However, it was found that women who did just under 3.5 minutes of vigorous activity a day had a 45% lower risk of any heart problems than women who did not do any vigorous activity throughout the day.
In particular, these women were 50% less likely to suffer a myocardial infarction and almost 70% less likely to suffer heart failure than women who did not engage in any type of intense physical activity.
Men obtained a smaller benefit. Performing about 5.5 minutes of intense physical activity a day reduced the risk of suffering a serious heart problem by 16%. However, when researchers looked at individual heart conditions, such as heart attack or stroke, no clear benefit was seen.
According to Wasfy, of Mass General Brigham in Boston, small doses of activity in everyday life have the greatest positive effect on people who do not exercise regularly.
“You get the greatest benefit from cardiovascular disease risk when you go from not moving at all to doing any movement,” he explained.
Women also get more benefits in minutes spent in physical activity, which may explain why study participants who engaged in fewer minutes of vigorous activity experienced greater improvements in heart disease risk.
“Women can get the same benefits from exercise as men, but at lower doses,” Wasfy said.
Carol Ewing Garber, professor of Movement Sciences and Education at Columbia University in New York, said that a key way to improve heart health is to interrupt long periods of sedentary lifestyle.
“If people spread out their activity throughout the day, this can have a very powerful effect on things like blood glucose levels,” Garber said, recommending that people who have office jobs get up regularly and take a break. walk.
Garber insisted that people should strive to get at least 150 minutes of exercise a week.
“I wouldn’t want people to think they can do this one or two minutes a day and be free from heart disease“he stressed.
Stamatakis, the study’s author, said people should try to make these short bursts of unplanned activity part of their daily lives.
“We’re talking about regular, frequent behavior, not something quick that can be done once every few days,” he stressed.
“The most important thing is not the small amounts of activity,” Stamatakis said. “The most important finding is the constancy of the activity”.
