Thirty Minutes Of Exercise Won’t Counteract Sitting All Day, But Adding Light Movement Can Help – New Research By Sebastien Chastin, Glasgow Caledonian University and Keith Diaz, Columbia University Medical Center via Natural Blaze
It’s recommended we do at least 30 minutes of exercise a day – or 150 minutes a week – to stay healthy. But 30 minutes accounts for just 2% of the day. And many of us spend most of the rest of the time sitting.
Research shows that sitting can be bad for our health in many ways – with some even suggesting it’s as bad for us as smoking. And our new study has revealed that 30 minutes of daily exercise is not enough to overcome the health risks of sitting too much. But we also revealed that with the right balance of time spent exercising and moving, it may be possible to counteract the negatives of sitting.
We combined data from six different studies from the UK, US and Sweden, looking at a total of over 130,000 adults. Each of the studies used a physical activity monitor (like a Fitbit) to measure a person’s movements and sitting time throughout the day. Each study then followed the participants for an average of four to 14 years to track whether any participants died.
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As expected, we found that 30 minutes of daily exercise decreased the risk of early death by up to 80% for those who also spent less than seven hours a day sitting. But it didn’t have the same effect for people who spent between 11 and 12 hours a day sitting. In other words, it’s not as simple as checking off the exercise box on the to-do list. A healthy lifestyle requires more than 30 minutes of exercise if you spend a lot of time sitting.
For those who sat a lot, 30 minutes of daily exercise would only lower risk of early death by 30% if combined with four to five hours of light movement a day (such as shopping, cooking, or yard work) – spending less than 11 hours sitting total. We can think of this mixture of light activity, exercise and sitting as a “cocktail”. And when it comes to living an active lifestyle, there are different recipes you can choose to to get the same benefits.
