A recent UK study may be welcomed news for those of you who do not consider yourselves ‘exercisers’.  Even if you can’t get to a gym or set aside time in your life for structured exercise, you can benefit from choosing to engage in repeated bouts of vigorous activity during your day.  

 

We are not referring to intentional ‘exercise snacks’  as we have previously written about, but rather bursts of movements that you are already doing in your life, like climbing stairs or briskly walking to your next meeting or your commute.

 

The data comes from the UK Biobank accelerometry study which were first published in the prestigious Nature journal in December of 2022.  Data was compiled from 25,241 individuals aged 40 to 69 who wore accelerometers on their wrists for 3 consecutive days (one on the ‘weekend’).  The accelerometers, now prevalent in almost all our exercise wearables, detect movement with some ability to detect movement intensity.    

 

Participants in this study were non-exercisers, defined as not spending any recreational time exercising and did not go for more than 1 recreational walk per week.  

 

The researchers compared mortality rates from these non-exercisers with those who did and did not have bouts of voluntary intense lifestyle physical activity (VILPA) recorded by their accelerometers.  Health outcomes for all participants were tracked for approximately 7 years.  

 

The accelerometers recorded bouts of VILPA in almost 89% of non-exercisers.  Remember these people were just wearing the wrist band, they were not told to change anything about their physical activity preferences.  On average these recorded VILPA bursts were the equivalent of 3 daily bouts lasting 1-2 minutes each.  No one in this group completed more than the equivalent of 11 bouts in a day.  

 

Among this group of non-exercisers, 852 participants died during the follow up period, with 511 deaths attributed to cancer and 266 deaths attributed to cardiovascular disease.  

 

All cause mortality was 38%-40% lower among those participants who engaged in a minimum of 1 or 2 minutes of VILPA 3 times a day compared to those who did not engage in any VILPA. 

 

According to one of the lead authors, Emmanuel Stamatakis, the hallmark traits of intense physical activity are a feeling of an increased heart rate and being out of breath.  If you can speak, but not sing that’s moderate intensity; if you can hardly speak more than a few words then you are in the vigorous intensity zone.  Stamatakis points out that although sufficient VILPA has some benefits on all cause mortality, it does not mean that VILPA should be a replacement for a regular and comprehensive exercise program.

 

This is an important landmark study that objectively measured physical activity levels and followed a large number of people for a significant period of time.  These prospective epidemiological studies are a goldmine of information for population based questions like this.

 

One significant limitation is the potential for a healthy user bias.  Only 6% of people asked to participate in the UK Biobank study accepted the invitation, so the participants may not be representative of the general population.  89% is an extremely high rate of observed bursts of intense physical activity, and likely a reflection of people wanting to be seen as being more active.  Also there are limitations to the amount of information that can be gained from accelerometers.  Strength based activities like carrying heavy items would not accurately be captured by the accelerometers.  

 

However, the findings are extremely important as we know a high percentage of adults are not meeting physical activity guidelines.  The Canadian Society for Exercise Phyiologists recommends 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity accumulation in a week.  

 

A US HHS report in 2020 noted that about three-quarters of adults aged 18 years or older weren’t active enough. And the most recent estimates from WHO found “more than 1.4 billion adults [are] at risk of developing or exacerbating diseases linked to inactivity.”  

 

There are clearly significant barriers to attaining these recommendations, so it’s important to both understand the barriers, but also identify some lower threshold targets that can still get results.

 

The takeaway point from this research is that every little bit of movement matters.  Even if you don’t go to the gym, play a recreational sport or spend your recreational time engaging in physical activity you can still get benefits from even small amounts of activity throughout the week.