Short bursts of movement throughout the day — no matter how small — can help the heart, especially for women, research published Tuesday found.
The study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that, in people who didn’t exercise, these short bursts of vigorous activity in everyday life, such as carrying a load of groceries to the car or going up a flight of stairs, can have a big effect on heart disease risk.
The research adds to a growing body of evidence showing that even small amounts of exercise are good for health. And it may be particularly beneficial, experts say, in the U.S., where about one-quarter of Americans don’t do any physical activity outside of work, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The big takeaway is, it doesn’t matter how you move, all that matters is that you move more,” said Dr. Meagan Wasfy, a sports cardiologist at Mass General Brigham in Boston who wasn’t involved with the new study.
The study looked at data from about 22,000 people ages 40 to 69 from the UK Biobank who were self-proclaimed “nonexercisers.” Everyone wore an activity tracker for one week in 2013 to 2015. On average, men in the study did 11 short bursts of vigorous activity during the day, some which lasted less than a minute, and women did about nine. Vigorous activity meant it was high intensity, said Emmanuel Stamatakis, a professor of physical activity, lifestyle and population health at the University of Sydney, who led the study.
The researchers then looked for any instances of heart attacks, heart failure or stroke through November 2022. A relatively small number of people — about 800 — had one of these major heart problems during the follow-up period. Women who got just under 3.5 minutes of vigorous movement a day, however, were found to have a 45% lower risk of any of the heart problems than women who didn’t log any vigorous movement throughout the day.
Most notably, these women were more than 50% less likely to have a heart attack and nearly 70% less likely to develop heart failure than women who did not log any vigorous activity.
Men saw a smaller benefit. Getting about 5.5 minutes of vigorous movement per day reduced their risk of a major heart problem by 16%. When the researchers parsed out individual heart conditions, however, such as heart attack or stroke, there wasn’t a clear benefit.
Small bursts of activity in everyday life have the biggest positive effect on people who don’t already regularly exercise, Wasfy, of Boston’s Mass General Brigham, said.
“You get the most benefits for cardiovascular disease risk when you go from not moving at all to doing any movement,” she said.
Women also get more “bang for their buck” as far as minutes spent doing physical activity, which can explain why women in the study, who got fewer minutes of vigorous activity, saw greater improvements in their risk for heart disease.
“Women can accrue the same benefits of exercise as men but at lower doses,” Wasfy said.
One key way short bursts of activity improve heart health is by breaking up long periods of sedentary behavior, said Carol Ewing Garber, a professor of movement science and education at Columbia University in New York City.
“If people break up their activity throughout the day, this can have a very powerful effect on things like blood glucose levels,” Garber said, recommending that people who work desk jobs regularly get up and take a walk.
Garber stressed that people should still strive to get at least 150 minutes of deliberate exercise every week.
“I would hate for people to think they can just do this for one or two minutes a day and be scot-free from heart disease,” he said.
Stamatakis, the study’s author, said that people should aim to make these unplanned, short bursts of activity part of daily life.
“We are talking about regular and frequent behavior, not something that is a quick fix that people can do once every few days,” he said.
“The most important aspect is not the small amounts of activity,” Stamatakis said. “The most important finding is the consistency of the activity.”
