the incredible benefits of movement snacks
This week, we’re going to talk about movement snacks and the intensity of physical activity. Now, we all know that physical activity or exercise is significant in the reduction of your cardiovascular disease and mortality risk, a number of cancers and a whole host of other diseases.
The physical activity guidelines in most developed nations are quite similar. Whether it’s the UK, US, Australia or New Zealand, they generally recommend 150-300 minutes of moderate physical activity a week or 75-150 minutes of vigorous intensity physical activity a week. Those equivalate to about what’s called six mets or six metabolic equivalents, which is the total amount of energy burned over the week.
Previously, there has been no accounting studies for little short bouts of physical activity but researchers have started to become more and more aware of its importance. These new research papers from the same study population looked in depth in different parts/components of physical activity.
The first one looked at movement snacks, which are basically 30 seconds to 2 minutes of vigorous physical activity. This is the first research paper that looked into the impact of that on your overall risk of disease and mortality. They called it vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity (VILPA) and looked at the associations of this VILPA with all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease mortality and cancer mortality in 25,241 non-exercisers in the UK Biobank Study with a median of 61.8 years.
They followed them for a period of about 7 years, and in that period, there was unfortunately 852 deaths that occurred. But what they found was that these movement snacks were inversely associated with all the three outcomes. Compared with participants who didn’t do any movement snacks, people who do three bouts of movements snacks lasting for 1-2 minutes each showed a whopping 38-40% reduction in all-cause mortality and cancer mortality risks; an even bigger 48-49% reduction in cardiovascular disease risk.
The median was 4.4 minutes a day of vigorous activity, and participants who were able to meet the median had a 26% reduction in all- cause and cancer mortality and a 32-34% reduction in cardiovascular disease mortality.
However, something that was really interesting about the study was they also looked at another 62,000 Biobank participants who were exercisers and are meeting guidelines for physical activity. They found similar results as to those who were doing movement snacks or VILPA.
What this means is that movement snacks in both exercisers and non- exercisers are beneficial for people. We don’t have to focus completely on that 150-300 minutes of moderate physical activity or the 75-150 minutes of vigorous, but if you do, that’s a real bonus. But if you are not doing that, a number of movement snacks and its recommended at least 4.4 minutes a day will get you 20-26% reduction and the more you do, the better it
actually is.
In another study that was released recently in the European Heart Journal, it looked at vigorous physical activity in heart disease and cancer and how little is enough vigorous. So, this wasn’t just looking at movement snacks as the last one did but the overall vigorous activity and the impact that it would have.
Their study participants, which was gained from the UK Biobank study with 72,000 adults who had a median age of 62 years old, were all wearing physical activity trackers to get objective data, not self-reported data. The take out of this study is that two bouts a day of up to 2 minutes of movement snacks were associated with a 35% lower cardiovascular
disease mortality. But 15-20 minutes of vigorous physical activity a week was associated with around a 20% lower all-cause mortality and that is what we call a dose response. So the more that you did a day, the lower your risk actually becomes.
What’s interesting, additionally, was they found that the optimal dose for protection against cancer, heart disease and all-cause mortality was 50-57 minutes a week of vigorous physical activity. But combining these studies together should suggest that you do numerous movement snacks throughout the day and add in a few sessions of vigorous physical activity
up until a total of 60 minutes—this applies if you are an older adult, which seems to be optimal—and then do some other moderate physical activity.
So, get that timer out, set it for every 25 minutes if you want and then just do a couple minutes of vigorous physical activity, which will increase blood flow and oxygen to your brain, burn up stress hormones and this new research shows it will protect you against cancer, cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. Now who doesn’t want a bit of that?
Corporate burnout to mental fitness
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