Reference News Network, September 19 report. According to the UK's New Scientist website on September 1, a US study found that people who engage in just over one minute of high-intensity activity daily had significantly lower all-cause mortality risk over the next six years compared to those who did not engage in any high-intensity activity at all.

The report stated that Emanuel Stamatakis, a scholar from the University of Sydney in Australia, said: "Only about 15% of adults exercise regularly. Most adults either find it hard to stick to regular exercise or are not interested in it." Therefore, Stamatakis and his colleagues have been studying the health benefits of "incidental exercise," such as climbing steep hills, playing actively with children, or lifting heavy objects. To conduct this study, they had participants who were already part of a large health study wear monitoring devices for a week to assess their daily activity levels and track their mortality risk in the following years.

In 2023, the researchers published results from tens of thousands of participants in the UK Biobank study. They found that people who engaged in about 4.4 minutes of high-intensity activity per day had a 38% lower all-cause mortality risk compared to those who did not engage in any high-intensity activity over the next seven or eight years.

Now, the team has also released results from 3,300 participants in the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. These participants had a higher proportion of overweight and obese individuals, and their overall health was generally lower than that of participants in the UK Biobank study. In this group, just 1.1 minutes of high-intensity activity per day could reduce the all-cause mortality risk by 38% over the next six years.

This means that in the less physically fit American participant group, 1.1 minutes of high-intensity activity provided a relative health improvement equivalent to that of 4.4 minutes of high-intensity activity in the more physically fit British participant group, although this does not mean they achieved the same level of health.

Carlos Celis-Morales from the University of Glasgow said: "The authors of the research paper suggest that this phenomenon may reflect that for people with lower activity levels and higher health risks, even small amounts of high-intensity activity can bring more significant benefits." He said: "This is what we call the 'ceiling effect': people with higher fitness levels have less room for health improvements; while those with low activity levels and possibly poorer fitness have greater potential for health improvements."

These study results further confirm that even small amounts of incidental high-intensity activity can bring significant health benefits. However, Stamatakis warned that this has not yet been conclusively proven. Currently, his team is planning further studies to provide stronger evidence that the observed health benefits are indeed due to increased incidental activity.

(Translation/ Liu Baiyun)

Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7551707174813893172/

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