How Much Physical Activity is Enough?

by Nina

The Walk by Vincent van Gough

After reading all those posts by Ram and me (Sitting is the New Smoking, The Ill Effects of Prolonged Sitting (Part 2), The Ill Effects of Prolonged Sitting (Part 1)) about the dangers of being sedentary and/or inactive, you might be wondering exactly how much exercise do you need to do to counteract the time you spend sitting. (A great many of us work at desk jobs, so for many of us spending many hours a day sitting is just a fact of life.) Fortunately for us, some scientists had the exact same question. A recent study in The Lancet called Does physical activity attenuate, or even eliminate, the detrimental association of sitting time with mortality? A harmonised meta-analysis of data from more than 1 million men and women reported the results of a systematic review (meta-analysis) of data from 16 studies that associated daily sitting time and physical activity with “all-cause” mortality. 

I don’t want to keep you in suspense, so I’ll just tell you what they found: 60-75 minutes per day of physical activity seemed to eliminate the increased risk of death associated with too much sitting time. Here’s the conclusion of the study: 

“High levels of moderate intensity physical activity (ie, about 60–75 min per day) seem to eliminate the increased risk of death associated with high sitting time. These results provide further evidence on the benefits of physical activity, particularly in societies where increasing numbers of people have to sit for long hours for work and may also inform future public health recommendations.” 

Now that might leave you with an important question: do I have to do all that exercise in single session?

In the NPR piece in which I heard about this study Care To Offset All Your Office Sitting? It'll Take Just An Hour A Day, Allison Aubrey asked the lead author of the study, Prof Ulf Ekelund, PhD, those very questions. He told her that the answer is yes, you can do your exercise in bits and pieces, at different times of the day, and with different types of exercise He said just be sure that the intensity of your exercise is high enough to get your heart rate up (walking at a brisk pace, for example). He also added, somewhat encouragingly, that even 20 minutes reduces some of the risk. But the more you can exercise you can do, the better. 

So that means if you're practicing yoga for exercise, you don't have to do a single practice that is at least one hour long—you could, for example, do one half an hour in the morning and one half an hour in the evening.  And you could also do a shorter practice and combine with a brisk walk or a bicycle ride or any other physical activity that you enjoy. 

I’m sure we’ll be hearing more on this topic in the near future and they'll probably be changing their minds like they always seem to do. But I say for now aiming for 60 minutes of physical activity per day is a reasonable goal to aim for. Are you with me?

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