A little more than ten minutes of daily physical exercise is enough to obtain positive effects on our health: a new study proves it.
Many of us have such busy days that finding space to work out at the gym is impossible. And so they give up physical exercise, thinking that it’s not worth dedicating just a handful of minutes to movement and a little healthy effort. But that’s a big mistake.
That mentality needs to be profoundly revised. Just 11 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous intensity aerobic activity can reduce the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease or premature death. To the full advantage of physical fitness and our well-being in general.
Exercises to keep fit during a coffee break
The intensity level of aerobic activities – walking, dancing, running, jogging, cycling and swimming – can be measured by heart rate and breathing during movement. In general, if you are able to talk but not sing during the exercise, the intensity is moderate. If, on the other hand, one cannot speak, it is elevated.
A team of scientists from the University of Cambridge in the UK has examined data from 196 studies, involving a total of more than 30 million adult participants. The results of the research were published in recent days on British Journal of Sports Medicine. The focus was mainly on participants who did the minimum recommended amount of 150 minutes of exercise per week (or 22 per day).
Compared with inactive participants, those engaged in moderate to high aerobic physical activity presented a 31% lower risk of dying from any cause, 29% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, and 15% lower risk of dying from cancer. The same amount of exercise corresponds to a 27% lower risk of developing cardiovascular disease and a 12% lower risk of cancer.
Little but good
Even subjects who did only half the minimum recommended amount of physical activity benefited. 75 minutes of moderate-intensity activity a week – about 11 minutes a day – translates into a 23% lower risk of premature death, and leads to a reduction in the likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease (by 17%) and cancer (by 7 %).
“If you find the idea of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week a little daunting, our findings should be good news,” says one of the study’s authors, Soren Brage of the University of Cambridge. “This is a good starting point: If you find 75 minutes a week to be manageable, you can try gradually increasing it up to the recommended total“.
“One in 10 premature deaths could have been prevented if everyone achieved even half the recommended level of physical activity“, note the authors in the study. Furthermore, “10.9% and 5.2% of all cases of cardiovascular disease and cancer would have been prevented”. And if you please.