HQ Team
November 21, 2021: In this age of remote work and internet addiction, sedentary lifestyles are a fact of life. Children as young as 2 have access to smart devices and are self- entertaining and parents are having a hard time restricting access. To counteract this sitting in one place, and the negative health effects, how much minimum exercise time one needs?
Research suggests about 30-40 minutes per day of building up a sweat should do it. Up to 40 minutes of “moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity” every day is about the right amount to balance out 10 hours of sitting still, the research says.
This average exercise time was arrived at based on a meta-analysis study of previous nine researches tracking involving 44,370 people from four different countries who were wearing some form of fitness tracker.
The analysis found the risk of death among those with a more sedentary lifestyle went up as the time spent on even moderate exercises came down.
“In active individuals doing about 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 amounts of sedentary time,” the researchers explained in their paper.
The World Health Organization 2020 Global Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour, put together by 40 scientists across six continents also had the same recommendation that 150-300 minutes of moderate intensity or 75-150 minutes of vigorous intensity physical activity every week are necessary to counter sedentary behaviour. The British Journal of Sports Medicine (BHSM) also put out a special edition to carry both the study and the revised guidelines.
As health experts have repeatedly recommended, take stairs instead of lifts, take your pets for a walk, play with the children outside, do yoga, join a dance class, cycle and go for walks—if you can’t manage an exercise schedule.
The 40-minute time frame is a broad suggestion across all ages and body types.
Another study suggests that cutting down on the sedentary lifestyle by just one hour can reduce the risk factors of lifestyle diseases within three months.
Risks of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases are increased particularly by overweight caused by physical inactivity and unhealthy diet, and metabolic disorders often associated with it.
The research was published here, and the latest WHO guidelines can be accessed here.
