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- A new meta-analysis of the evidence suggests that 30-40 minutes of moderate to strenuous exercise per day may “offset” the negative health impacts of sitting at a desk all day.
- This is in line with recent recommendations from the World Health Organization that 75 to 150 minutes of strenuous physical activity each week to counteract sedentary behavior.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
We know that spending hours after hours sitting is not good for you, but how much exercise is needed to counter the negative health impact of a day at the desk?
A new study suggests that 30 to 40 minutes a day of sweating should be enough.
Up to 40 minutes of “moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity” each day is about the right amount to balance 10 hours of still sitting, research says, although any amount of exercise or even just standing up helps to some degree. .
This is 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 who wore some form of fitness tracker.
The analysis found that the risk of death among people with a more sedentary lifestyle increased with decreasing time spent engaging in moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity.
“In active individuals who perform approximately 30-40 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 sedentary times,” the researchers wrote. .
In other words, doing some reasonably intense activities – bicycling, brisk walking, gardening – can reduce the risk of premature death down to what it would be if you didn’t do all that sitting, to the extent that this link can be seen. in the accumulated data of many 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 an elaborate merging point between separate studies with different volunteers, times and conditions, the advantage of this particular piece of research is that it relied on relatively objective data from wearable devices, not self-reported data from participants.
The study comes alongside the publication of the 2020 World Health Organization Global Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior, put together by 40 scientists on six continents. The BJSM has released a special edition of their publication to bring both the new study and the new WHO guidelines.
“These guidelines are very timely, as we are in the midst of a global pandemic, which has locked people indoors for long periods and encouraged an increase in sedentary behavior,” according to physical activity and population health researcher Emmanuel Stamatakis. of the University of Sydney in Australia.
“People can still protect their health and compensate for the harmful effects of physical inactivity,” said Stamatakis, who was not involved in the meta-analysis but is the co-editor of the BJSM.. “As these guidelines point out, all physical activity counts and any amount of it is better than nothing.”
Experts are still not sure what “too much sitting around” means
Research based on fitness trackers is broadly in line with 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 walk past a billboard for Fitbit Ionic watches at the IFA Electronics Show in Berlin, Germany, September 1, 2017.
Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters
Climbing stairs instead of taking the elevator, playing with kids and pets, taking part in yoga or dancing, doing housework, walking and cycling are all ways people can be more active – and if you can ‘ 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 the previous research. As more data is released, we should learn more about how to stay healthy even if we have to spend extended periods of time at the desk.
“Even though 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 limit is for ‘too much sitting’. But this is a hectic research field and hopefully we’ll have answers in a few years,” he added.
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