New Danish research has good news for those who never exercise
If you are among those people who cannot be bothered with exercise, new research from TrygFonden's Center for Active Health at Rigshospitalet shows that you with very little physical activity actually can gain a health benefit and accordingly reduce the risk of getting type 2 diabetes: all you have to do is alternately stand up and sit down every 15 minutes throughout the day.
NOT AN EXCUSE TO STOP EXERCISING
According to one of the researchers behind this research, Danish Diabetes Academy funded Post Doc Mathias Ried-Larsen, the results should not be considered an excuse to stop exercising, however. Those who move around normally during the day cannot replace exercise with just standing up and sitting down. The health benefits in this case only apply to those who are entirely inactive.
Inactive but physically healthy men at age 30 have participated in the study, and through a period of 27 hours they have lived in three different ways in the Center of Active Health's test center. They have been standing up and sitting down alternately every 15 minutes, they have walked with moderate intensity for 30 minutes (corresponding to the minimum recommendation for daily physical activity), and they have done both in order to control if there were health benefits to gain from combining the two methods.
The researchers behind the study have regularly measured their subjects' blood sugar to monitor whether or not lifestyle is readable, and as a matter of fact it is. "We assumed that both methods would lower the subjects' blood sugar, and that the combination of the two would result in an extra benefit, but we were wrong - what turned out to lower the blood sugar was the intermittently standing up and sitting down", says Mathias Ried-Larsen and Post Doc Fabiana Benatti, who have been working on the research project.
Mathias Ried-Larsen emphasizes that the study only provided a snapshot of the subjects' lifestyle and thereby not rejecting the fact that a brisk walk might be able to help the inactive over time. "Actually, there is a lot suggesting that more exercise will result in a health benefit, not the least by preventing overweight and obesity", he says.
A LOT CLOSER TO FINDING AN ANSWER TO EXACTLY HOW LITTLE EXERCISE CERTAIN POPULAITON GROUPS NEED IN ORDER TO GAIN HEALTH BENEFITS
Mathias Ried-Larsen and his colleagues consider this new knowledge not only to be useful at workplaces and at home, but also at hospitals, where patients are admitted for longer periods with no access to exercise facilities.
The project was initiated after Fabiana Benatti and Mathias Ried-Larsen in 2015 had carried out a literature review and concluded that the very inactive not necessarily need to change their lifestyle that much to gain a health related benefit. "We became completely absorbed in trying to figure out exactly how little exercise is needed for certain population groups, which we are now a lot closer to finding an answer to", Mathias Ried-Larsen states.
The article is recently published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise (June 2017) and cited in several Danish daily newspapers, among others Jyllands Posten.
CONTACT
Mathias Ried-Larsen, mathias.ried-larsen@regionh.dk
Mathias Ried-Larsen is 36 years old and is already a renowned researcher. Last year Danish Diabetes Academy, who has co-financed his research, nominated him as the 'Young Investigator of 2016'.