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- A new meta-analysis of evidence suggests that 30-40 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per day can “offset” the negative health impacts of sitting at a desk all day.
- This aligns with recent recommendations from the World Health Organization that 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous physical activity each week to counteract sedentary behavior.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
We know that sitting hour after hour is not good for us, but how much exercise does it take to counteract the negative health impact of a day at a desk?
A new study suggests roughly 30 to 40 minutes of sweating a day should be sufficient.
Up to 40 minutes of “moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity” every day is the right amount to balance 10 hours of sitting, research says, although any amount of exercise or even just standing helps to some extent.
That’s based on a meta-analysis, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM), of nine previous studies involving a total of 44,370 people in four different countries using some form of fitness tracker.
The analysis found that the risk of death among people with a more sedentary lifestyle increased as the time spent in moderate to vigorous-intensity physical activity decreased.
“In active individuals who engage in 30 to 40 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity, the association between high sedentary time and risk of death is not significantly different from those with low amounts of sedentary time,” they wrote. researchers.
In other words, doing some reasonably intensive activities (cycling, brisk walking, gardening) can reduce the risk of an early death to what it would be if you weren’t doing all that sitting down, to the extent that this link can be seen in accumulated data from thousands of people.
People can ‘offset the harmful effects of physical inactivity’
A woman running.
Inti St. Clair / Getty Images
While meta-analyzes like this always require a combination of points made in separate studies with different volunteers, timescales, and conditions, the benefit of this particular research is that it was based on relatively objective data from wearable devices, not on self-reported data by participants.
The study comes alongside the publication of the World Health Organization’s 2020 Global Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior, produced by 40 scientists from six continents. The BJSM published a special edition of its publication to carry both the new study and the new WHO guidelines.
“These guidelines are very timely given that we are in the middle of a global pandemic, which has confined people indoors for long periods and encouraged an increase in sedentary behavior,” according to population health and physical activity researcher Emmanuel Stamatakis from the University of Sydney in Australia.
“People can still protect their health and offset the damaging effects of physical inactivity,” said Stamatakis, who was not involved in the meta-analysis but is a co-editor of BJSM,. “As these guidelines emphasize, all physical activity counts, and any amount is better than none.”
Experts are still not sure what constitutes ‘sitting too long’
Research based on physical activity trackers is broadly in line with the new WHO guidelines, which recommend 150 to 300 minutes of moderate intensity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous intensity physical activity each week to counteract sedentary behavior.
Visitors pass a billboard for Fitbit Ionic watches at the IFA Electronics Show in Berlin, Germany, on September 1, 2017.
Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters
Taking the stairs instead of taking the elevator, playing with children and pets, participating in yoga or dancing, doing housework, walking and biking are all presented as ways in which people can be more active, and if it is possible ”. To manage the 30-40 minutes right away, the researchers say, start small.
Making recommendations for all ages and body types is tricky, although the 40-minute time frame for the activity fits with previous research. As more data is released, we should learn more about staying healthy even if we have to spend long periods of time at a desk.
“Although the new guidelines reflect the best science available, there are still some gaps in our knowledge,” Stamatakis said.
“We are not yet clear, for example, where exactly the bar for ‘sitting too much’ is. But this is a fast-paced field of research, and we hope to have answers within a few years,” he added.
