In the study, people who got less than 20 minutes of activity each day had the highest risk of death. Arek Taking the staircase instead of the elevator may end up being the most exercise some can manage on a particularly busy day. For many adults, accommodating a grueling hour at the gym in their busy schedules can be quite the challenge. This is particularly concerning as a new research suggests that more than 20 minutes of daily exercise is necessary to reduce mortality and the risk of disease. But the good news seems to be that the exercise can provide all these benefits even when broken down into short bursts of activity performed throughout the day. Back in 2008, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued guidelines for adults that recommended at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity on a weekly basis. The guidelines also make a note that the exercise should be performed in bouts lasting at least 10 minutes because "intervals shorter than this do not have the same health benefits." Professor William E. Kraus from the Duke University School of Medicine noted a contradiction between exercise guidelines and the type of activities that are generally recommended. "For about 30 years, guidelines have suggested that moderate-to-vigorous activity could provide health benefits, but only if you sustained the activity for 10 minutes or more," he said. "That flies in the face of public health recommendations, like taking the stairs instead of the elevator, and parking farther from your destination. Those don’t take 10 minutes, so why were they recommended?" In his new study titled "Moderate‐ to‐Vigorous Physical Activity and All‐Cause Mortality: Do Bouts Matter?", Kraus and researchers from the National Cancer Institute investigated how much the duration of exercise matters for our long-term health. The study was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association on March 22. The researchers examined 4,840 U.S. adults who were 40 years and older during 2003-2006 using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHNES). For up to a week, participants wore devices called accelerometers which could track how often they moved and determine how long they exercised. The researchers used the national database to find out how many of the survey participants were still alive in 2011, revealing 700 recorded deaths. According to the findings, those who got less than 20 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) were at the highest risk of death among all participants. Comparatively, people who got 60 to 99 minutes a day were about half as likely to have died and those who got 100 or more minutes a day were three-quarters less likely to have died. According to the American Heart Association, examples of moderate physical activity include brisk walking, bicycling at less than 10 miles per hour, ballroom dancing etc. Importantly, the study found that sustaining bouts of physical activity played no factor in overall health. The accumulated minutes of exercise had the same benefit, regardless of whether the physical activity was performed in a concentrated session or added up through short bursts of activities performed throughout the day. Source
