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We know that sitting down all day isn’t good for our health, but spending all day at a desk is a reality for many of us. So what can we do to balance out the negative effects of hour after hour of sitting? New research suggests a little more than half an hour of working out could do the trick.
A meta-analysis of nine previous studies involving more than 40,000 people finds doing 30 to 40 minutes of “moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity” every day can balance out 10 hours of sitting. So doing “reasonably intensive” activities like riding a bike, brisk walking, and even gardening can lower your risk for health issues related to doing all that sitting back down to what it would be if you weren’t sitting all day.
And even if you don’t have that much time to devote to a daily sweat session, the research suggests any amount of exercise -or even just standing up- can help some. That’s especially helpful since we’re still dealing with a pandemic which has some people confined inside and being more sedentary.
- “People can still protect their health and offset the harmful effects of physical inactivity,” explains physical activity and population health researcher Emmanuel Stamatakis. “As these guidelines emphasize, all physical activity counts and any amount of it is better than none.”
Source: Science Alert