Doing everyday chores and activities a bit more briskly might lead to big gains in health and longevity. Photo / 123RF
Doing everyday chores and activities a bit more briskly might lead to big gains in health and longevity. Photo / 123RF
Doing everyday activities more briskly, such as gardening and cleaning, may lead to gains in health and longevity, a new study shows.
If you’re not a fan of working out or simply don’t have time, we’ve got good news for you. Doing everyday chores andactivities a bit more briskly might lead to big gains in health and longevity, a new study shows. That means you could tweak how you clean your house, climb stairs or run for the bus and get some of the benefits of exercise without a trip to the gym.
In the study, published this month in Circulation, researchers analysed the daily movements of more than 20,000 adults over the course of about a week. None formally exercised. But some moved with more zip than others as they went about their lives, taking the stairs instead of the escalator, for instance, or speed vacuuming their living rooms.
The amounts of these everyday exertions were small, the study found, often less than five minutes a day, but the impacts appeared outsize. Those who moved around briskly were as much as half as likely to experience a heart attack or stroke in the following years as people who almost always dawdled through their days.
The study suggests that “it’s a good idea to find ways to fit exertion into your daily life,” said Emmanuel Stamatakis, a professor at the University of Sydney, who led the study. “But that doesn’t mean you have to actually exercise.”
The study advances a growing area of research into whether and how we can be healthy without exercise. For the past few years, Stamatakis and his colleagues have been using data from the immense UK Biobank to explore that issue.
The biobank has enrolled tens of thousands of British adults, who provided health information and tissue samples. Many of them also wore advanced activity trackers for a week, which provided detailed readouts of how they spent almost every moment of their days at work and home.
In past studies from his lab, Stamatakis and his co-authors analysed those readouts and related health and death records. They discovered that people who said they never exercised but who often moved around at what scientists call a vigorous pace – meaning they got out of breath as they ran for a bus or sprinted intensely up the stairs – typically developed fewer serious diseases and lived longer than people who rarely, if ever, moved vigorously.
But Stamatakis knew, as an exercise scientist, that a lot of people are intimidated by words like vigorous and intense, in the context of exercise and movement.
So, for the latest study, he and colleagues decided to see whether gentler forms of everyday activities might also be associated with better health.
Small bursts of movement could do more than you think. Photo / 123RF
Moving in short bursts has greatest benefits
In simple terms, physical activity can be light, moderate or vigorous, depending on how hard you push yourself. Light-intensity activities feel easy enough that you can chat with someone without puffing and even sing. During moderate activity, you’re still able to talk, a little breathlessly, but not sing. When activity grows vigorous, you can barely speak without gasping, and you certainly can’t sing.
To conduct their study, Stamatakis and his colleagues used algorithmic machine learning to closely analyse movement patterns in 10-second increments and determine whether someone was moving lightly, moderately or vigorously. They used biobank tracker records from 24,139 adults who never formally exercised, then cross-checked against hospital and death data.
What they found was that light everyday activities, which might include strolls to pick up lunch or visit the copier, slightly reduced risks for cardiovascular problems and deaths during the next eight years, compared to people who recorded almost zero activity (meaning they remained seated for almost the entire day). But people needed more than two hours a day of light activity to see much benefit.
Moderate everyday activity was far more potent. If people spent 24 minutes a day moving around at a moderate pace, their risks of developing or dying from cardiovascular problems dropped by as much as 50%.
And the most effective dose of vigorous everyday movement was even lower. Barely five minutes a day of pacing around or rushing places while huffing and puffing was associated with nearly 40% less likelihood of dying from heart problems.
If gym workouts aren’t your thing, this research might offer a simpler option. Photo / 123RF
Clean and garden as fast as you can
From a practical standpoint, the takeaway of the new study is straightforward, Stamatakis said. “Look for opportunities” to ramp up the intensity of chores and activities, he said, especially if you don’t often exercise.
“Taking the stairs will be moderate activity for most people,” he said. Hurrying up them will be vigorous. Or pick up the pace while you walk, swinging your arms, “which is what we call sprint walking,” he said, “and is moderate. Or garden as fast as you can. There are plenty of opportunities to add a little more exertion” to what you’re going to be doing anyway.
The study has limitations, of course. It mostly involved White, educated Brits. It’s also possible that people who move through chores slowly have underlying health problems, predisposing them to heart risks, without any contribution from their daily movements. But the researchers excluded anyone who experienced heart problems in the first year of the study, lessening that possibility.
Perhaps most important, the findings aren’t meant to discourage exercise. “You can do both,” Stamatakis said, exercise and push yourself sometimes as you go about your day, assuming that your health and circumstances allow.
“It’s quite a good study, both the methodology and the message,” said Martin Gibala, an exercise scientist at McMaster University in Canada, who studies exercise intensity but was not involved with this research. The results suggest that, even if you choose not to exercise, sprinkling a little moderate or vigorous everyday activity into your life “can have meaningful health effects”.
