Exercising at a high intensity for as little as 1.5 minutes a day may protect from the risk of a major cardiovascular event, such as heart attack or heart failure, particularly among women who don’t exercise regularly, a new study says. Photo by Daniel Reche/Pixabay
Exercising at a high intensity for as little as 90 seconds a day may protect from risk of a major cardiovascular event, such as heart attack or heart failure, particularly among women who don’t exercise regularly, an international study finds.
The research, published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal, shows that just 1 1/2 to four minutes of routine, but vigorous, physical exertion activity, like brisk stair climbing or carrying heavy shopping, almost halves major adverse cardiovascular events risk in women who do not otherwise participate in structured exercise or sport. Advertisement
The team tracked the cardiovascular health of 81,052 women and men with an average age of 61, who wore an activity tracker round the clock for seven days between 2013 and 2015, collating hospital admissions and deaths from heart attack, stroke and heart failure over a close to eight-year follow-up period. Advertisement
The goal was to determine whether the known cardiovascular benefits of longer, high-intensity physical activity in middle age may also be conferred by short bursts of vigorous intermittent exercise as part of a person’s lifestyle, and if so, how much is necessary to achieve a measurable outcome?
Women who exercised for 1.2 to 1.6 minutes a day still lowered all major cardiovascular event risks by 30% and their risk of heart attack and heart failure by 33% and 40%, respectively.
The team concluded a clear, dose-response association for all major cardiovascular events after adjusting for other potential factors such as lifestyle, cardiovascular risk, co-existing conditions and ethnicity. They also found a strong dose-response association for heart attack and heart failure.
The benefits for men, however, were far less definitive.
Men whose sole exercise was 5.6 minutes, on average, of vigorous informal lifestyle-type exercise had a 16% lower risk of any type of major cardiovascular events than the sedentary men in the control group, but the team were unable to establish any clear associations with these major events.
The men who exercised for 2.3 minutes saw a reduction in their risk of all major cardiovascular events events of just 11%.
Among subjects who exercised regularly — classified as regular structured exercise or walking twice or more weekly — no such major sex differences were seen in the dose-response associations between vigorous physical activity and the overall risk of major cardiovascular events or heart attack and heart failure. Advertisement
Evidence of a dose-response association with stroke was seen, but only in men.
The question is important, the authors said, particularly for women who don’t or can’t exercise regularly because women tend to have a lower level of cardiorespiratory fitness than men at any age.
“Vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity may be a promising physical activity target for major cardiovascular events prevention in women unable or not willing to engage in formal exercise,” the authors wrote.
They also recommend men who incorporate some vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity into their daily routines continue to engage in regular vigorous structured exercise to lower their cardiovascular disease risk, even though the data showed women who did no other exercise gained the greatest benefit.
The authors cautioned that, as with all observational studies, their research does not prove that the vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity in which the subjects engaged was the cause of their lowered major cardiovascular event risk.
The study, which has been peer-reviewed, was funded by Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.
