One in four adults in the United States sits for at least eight hours every day. Research highlights that people who sit down for most of the day have a 34% higher risk of heart disease compared to those who have a more active workday. The detrimental impact of a sedentary lifestyle is widely known. On the other hand, exercise is good for your health, and many people think moderate exercise is enough to offset the adverse effects of sitting all day. If you sit all day at a desk but you work out afterward, does that exercise session negate the effects of sitting for all those hours? A new study dives in.
The study
A study published in the journal PLOS One involved data from an ongoing study of over one thousand former or current people from Colorado. The researchers focused on relatively young participants aged 28 to 49, with an average age of 33. The lead study author, Ryan Bruellman, explained that they chose this age group because younger adults “tend to think they’re impervious to the impacts of aging. But what you do during this critical time of life matters.”
The majority of the participants sat for many hours, with an average of almost nine hours daily. For the study, there were different exercise rates ranging from 80 and 160 minutes of moderate physical activity every week to less than 135 minutes of vigorous exercise every week.
The researchers assessed every participant’s ‘heart age’ using two heart health indicators: body mass index or BMI and cholesterol levels. The cholesterol levels included total cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein.
The results
The minimum daily exercise recommendations were about 20 minutes of moderate exercise per day. Even the study participants who met those recommendations still had higher total cholesterol and higher body mass index or BMI levels. In other words, when the researchers checked the heart markers, they determined that performing moderate exercise for about 20 minutes daily didn’t help or counteract the negative impact of sitting for an average of almost nine hours. As the sitting time increased, so did the heart aging.
The participants who performed ‘vigorous’ exercise like running, swimming laps, or playing basketball for around 30 minutes or more per day experienced changes in those markers and had cholesterol levels similar to sedentary people about five years and ten years younger.
It seems that vigorous exercise helped counteract the harm from sitting. The researchers expressed the importance of getting up and moving around throughout the day, recommending trying standing desks and incorporating more vigorous exercise into your week.
The best types of vigorous exercise
Taking a quick walk when you get off work might not be enough to offset the health dangers of sitting for so long. It might be time to up the ante and get those muscles moving more.
Here are some of the best types of vigorous exercise to try:
- Hiking uphill.
- Cycling at a brisk pace or steeply uphill.
- Swimming fast or swimming laps.
- Strength training.
- Dancing.
- Aerobic exercise.
- Heavy gardening, such as digging.
- Jogging or running.
- Martial arts.
- Sports involving lots of sprinting or movement, such as hockey, soccer, and basketball.
- Tennis and court sports like racquetball and squash.
- High-intensity interval training.
