11 minutes of daily exercise can help offset the effects of sitting
Walking for at least 11 minutes a day could reduce the undesirable health consequences of sitting for hours and hours, according to a helpful new study of the ways in which both inactivity and exercise influence how long we live. The study, which relied on objective data from tens of thousands of people, found that those who were the most sedentary faced a high risk of dying young, but if people got up and moved, they slashed that threat substantially, even if they did not move much.
For most of us, sitting for prolonged periods of time is common, especially now, as we face the dual challenges of COVID-related restrictions and the shortening, chilly days of winter. Recent surveys of people’s behavior since the start of the pandemic indicate that a majority of us are exercising less and sitting more than we were a year ago.
Not surprisingly, there could be long-term health consequences from this physical quietude. Multiple past epidemiological studies show links between sitting and mortality. In general, in these studies, couchbound people are far more likely to die prematurely than active people are.
But how active an active person should be if he or she hopes to mitigate the downsides of sitting has remained unclear.
If you sit for eight hours at work, then stroll for half an hour in the evening — meaning you comply with the standard exercise recommendation of about 30 minutes of exercise most days — is that enough movement to undo most of the health risks of too much sitting?
Some past research had suggested the answer is no. A 2016 study involving more than a million people found that men and women needed to exercise moderately for about 60 to 75 minutes a day in order to diminish the undesirable effects of sitting.
That study, like most similar, earlier research, asked people to remember how much they had moved or sat, which can be problematic.
For the new study, published in a special issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine devoted to the World Health Organization’s updated physical activity guidelines, many authors of the 2016 review decided to, in effect, repeat that earlier research, but this time use data from people who had worn activity monitors to objectively track how much they moved and sat.
The results strongly suggest that if we sit all day, we should aim, too, to get up and move, says Ulf Ekelund, a professor of epidemiology and physical activity at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo, who led the new study. “Brisk walking is excellent moderate exercise,” he says, and, in half-hour stints, or even less, might help to lengthen our lives.