We know that spending lots of time sitting down isn’t good for us, but just how much exercise is needed to counteract(抵消) the negative health effects of sitting down all day?
Research suggests about 30-40 minutes per day of building up a sweat should do it. This is to say, up to 40 minutes of “moderate to vigorous intensity(高强度) physical activity” every day is about the right amount to balance out 10 hours of sitting still, although any amount of exercise or even just standing up helps to some extent.
That’s based on a study published in 2020 analyzing nine previous studies, involving a total of 44, 370 people in four different countries who were wearing some form of fitness tracker. The analysis found the risk of death among those with a more sedentary lifestyle went up as time spent engaging in moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity went down.
“In active individuals doing about 30-40 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity, the association between high sitting time and risk of death is not significantly different from those with low amounts of sitting time,” the researchers explained in their paper. In other words, putting in some reasonably intensive activities—cycling, walking fast, gardening—can lower your risk of an earlier death right back down to what it would be if you weren’t doing all that sitting around. Walking up the stairs instead of taking the lift, playing with children and pets, taking part in yoga or dancing, doing chores, walking, and cycling are all put forward as ways in which people can be more active—and if you can’t manage the 30-40 minutes right away, the researchers say, start off small.
“As these guidelines show, all physical activity counts and any amount of it is better than none,” said physical activity and population health researcher Emmanuel Stamatakis from the University of Sydney in Australia. “People can still protect their health and counteract the negative effects of sitting down all day.”
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