Fitness: Beyond exercise, move more and live longer

With so much emphasis being placed on accumulating a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a week, there’s little discussion about what you should be doing the other 9,930 minutes.  

Sure, the estimated 20-per-cent reduction in mortality risk among individuals who meet the recommended amount of physical activity is impressive enough on its own. But there’s even greater improvements in longevity when you do more than just rest on the laurels of meeting the bare minimum.

A recent study published in the journal of Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism took on the challenge of determining the impact of supplementing 150 minutes of intentional physical activity with more incidental movement during the day.  

“Important questions remain regarding the joint and comparative benefits of light physical activity and moderate to vigorous physical activity,” said the study’s authors, who hail from the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. 

Light physical activity broadly covers most of the movement behaviours outside of deliberate exercise. Household chores and yard work, strolling to the store, bus stop or coffee shop, playing with the kids, walking the dog and low-intensity recreational activities like lawn games, fishing and leisurely paddling are examples of the type of activity that people engage in over the course of a day and/or weekend. 

Early studies on the benefits of light physical activity have been faced with difficulty distinguishing between light and moderate intensity activity — especially when using self-reported data. But the newest generation of wearables, which track any and all activity over the course of the day, have negated the bias related to personal recall and the self-determination of movement/exercise intensity. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Study, the researchers extrapolated a subset of 3,949 study subjects (an almost equal number of males and females) aged 40 and older who wore an accelerometer to record their daily activity. Their movement history was then cross-referenced with death records to establish mortality risk.

“The most notable finding was the substantial joint effect of light physical activity and moderate to vigorous physical activity on reducing mortality risk, which exceeded the maximal benefit of either intensity alone,” the researchers said. 

The combination of 335 minutes a day of light physical activity and 20 minutes a day of moderate/vigorous physical activity yielded an impressive six-fold reduction in mortality risk. But even about half that effort, 220 minutes of light physical activity a day and 10 minutes of moderate/vigorous activity, resulted in three-fold lessening in risk.

If that seems like a lot of minutes to be active, keep in mind that light physical activity is pretty much any movement you perform while not sitting. And in this particular cohort most of the higher-intensity activity was more moderate than vigorous and 45 per cent of the participants accumulated their exercise minutes in short bouts of less than 10 minutes.  

“These comparisons underscore how crucial physical activity is as a modifiable risk factor for longevity, emphasizing that its protective effect likely surpasses the impact of major health risks, particularly when light physical activity and moderate/vigorous physical activity are considered together,” the researchers said.

Still not convinced you can find the time to make a significant dent in your mortality risk?  A substantial number (58 per cent) of the study subjects accumulated the combined amount of light and moderate/vigorous physical activity needed to realize the three-fold improvement in longevity. Twenty-six per cent combined both intensities in a dose large enough to obtain a six-fold reduction in mortality risk. 

“This suggests that health-enhancing levels of physical activity are reasonable and attainable for most adults,” the researchers said. 

That’s an important message for both active and not-so-active Canadians. What you do all day matters as much as a single workout. That’s not to downplay the benefits gained by hitting the gym regularly, but if you spend the rest of the day sitting at a desk or staring at a screen, you’re not doing all you can to add years to your life. 

As for those of you who struggle sustaining a regular workout schedule, the impact of short bouts of exercise combined with getting out of your chair more often is not only doable, it’s impressive enough to make you rethink your current lifestyle. Simple choices like going to the park with the kids, biking to the library, getting up from your desk more often and leaving the car at home the next time you want to hang out at the coffee shop all contribute toward the goal of four to six hours a day of light physical activity. Combine that with 150 minutes a week of intentional exercise in the moderate to vigorous range, even in short bouts, and you’ll have more years to enjoy life to its fullest. 

Those extra years might be motivation enough to get you out of your chair, but knowing that you’re also more likely to be in good health and with energy enough to continue doing the things you love is added incentive to move more and sit less.