When it comes to exercise, the best advice may be to work harder, not longer. A study published over the weekend highlights the unique benefits of breathtaking training.
Scientists tracked the long-term health of UK residents. Researchers found that people who spent more hours per week doing vigorous physical activity were significantly less likely to develop eight different chronic diseases and less likely to die early, even when total active hours were taken into account. They argue that regularly engaging in short bursts of intense exercise, such as chasing a bus, can have a significant impact on lifespan.
“These findings support the prioritization of higher intensity activities in clinical and public health interventions aimed at preventing non-communicable diseases, wherever possible,” the researchers said in a paper published Sunday in the European Heart Journal.
Why the type of exercise is important
Scientists already know that intense exercise (typically defined as activity that leaves you out of breath during exercise) tends to have more health benefits per minute than light exercise. However, researchers say there is still uncertainty about how these benefits stack up in different health conditions and the relative importance between exercise duration and intensity.
To get to the bottom of this, the team looked at data from the UK Biobank, a long-term project tracking the health of middle-aged people in the UK. Some volunteers at the biobank were asked to wear accelerometers on their wrists for a week so researchers could objectively measure people’s baseline physical activity. In all, they studied more than 300,000 people who self-reported their typical physical activity over a week, and about 100,000 who tracked their activity.
Compared to people who did no strenuous exercise or were inactive at all, people who spent at least 4% of their weekly time doing some strenuous activity were less likely to develop these diseases (severe cardiovascular disease, liver disease, chronic kidney disease, chronic respiratory disease, immune-related inflammatory diseases, arrhythmias, type 2 diabetes, and dementia) over a seven-year follow-up period.
The largest relative effects were for dementia (63% reduction) and diabetes (60% reduction), and those who were more physically active were 46% less likely to die during the study period. And exercise intensity compared to exercise length appears to be most correlated with reduced risk of inflammatory diseases, major cardiovascular diseases, arrhythmias, and dementia. These findings indicate that intense exercise may be particularly helpful in reducing harmful inflammation that contributes to these and other health problems.
Importantly, these patterns held true even when looking at people who did about the same amount of physical activity per week at different intensity levels, or even when they did very little intense exercise at all.
“Intensity consistently showed higher preventability than sum. [physical activity] volume,” the researchers wrote.
What does this mean for your daily life?
Researchers acknowledge that some people are unable to increase their levels of physical activity for a variety of reasons, including older age and pre-existing health conditions. And at the end of the day, any amount of regular exercise is better than none at all.
But for those who have the drive and ability to make the most of their day, intensity may be the life hack they’re looking for. And it doesn’t necessarily have to take a long time, researchers say.
“This doesn’t require going to the gym. Adding short, breath-taking activities to your daily routine, such as climbing the stairs faster, walking briskly between errands, or playing actively with your children, can make a big difference,” study author Mingxue Shen, a professor of public health at Central South University in Hunan, China, said in a statement released by the European Society of Cardiology, which presented the study. “Applying 15 to 20 minutes of this type of effort per week, even just a few minutes per day, led to meaningful health benefits.”
Personally speaking, this study motivates me to try a little harder while jogging, at least sometimes.
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