Prof Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, The Open University, said: The findings just show us that the type of people who have lifestyles that include short bursts of vigorous activity, for whatever reason, tend to be the same people who live longer and avoid heart attacks.”
Therefore it does not tell us whether adding short bursts of vigorous activity into your lifestyle, if you are not doing this already, lowers your risk. “The major limitation is that this data is observational. They find the association between short bursts of vigorous activity and better health in later life is the same, whether the exercise was done purposefully as part of an exercise programme, or just because you happened to do the activity as part of your other daily activity, for example, by running for a bus. “What is different about this research is that the investigators have studied how patterns of exercise link with future health, whether or not the participant intended to do the exercise. Furthermore the results have been linked with data on the future health of participants, captured through the NHS, which is a unique strength of research performed in the UK. This was developed specifically for research purposes to capture precise information about activity in a large sample of the UK population. “The findings are important because they are based on very robust wearable technology. Prof Paul Leeson, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Oxford, said: “Nevertheless, the findings are important and provocative and should stimulate further research yielding greater insights into the potential health benefits of vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity.” “It’s important to note that the authors haven’t shown that vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity increases cardiorespiratory fitness (a potential mechanism to explain the findings), and they haven’t shown ‘reductions’ in mortality risk – they have shown a lower mortality risk in those reporting vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity than in those who do not report such activity. This focus on the potential benefits of routine daily activities completed with vigour in ‘non-exercise settings’ is important. If these findings do represent cause and effect, then the implication in the real world is that people who squeeze in just a few (4 or 5) minutes of vigorous exercise each day into their daily activities can substantially lower their risk of mortality from chronic diseases. This is a limitation of all observational studies. The authors have accounted for confounding variables but this is still an observational study so there is always the possibility of reverse causation where people who have naturally high fitness levels also exhibit other constitutional factors which protect them from disease and the association is not necessarily cause and effect. It fits with existing evidence that participating in vigorous physical activity is associated with a lower risk of all-cause, cardiovascular disease and cancer mortality and it moves the field forward by showing that this applies to unstructured forms of vigorous physical activity in people who report being non-exercisers. “This is good quality research backed up by solid data – notably the use of accelerometry to quantify vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity. I use the word ‘potential’ because we can’t know cause and effect from this study, because it’s an observational study not a trial. This study suggests there is potential for short bouts of vigorous physical activity completed during routine daily activities e.g., walking briskly uphill, climbing stairs, carrying shopping, even for a total of only 4 to 5 minutes per day, to have major benefits for reducing the risk of death due to cardiovascular disease, cancer and all-causes. “This is a very nice paper emphasising the potential benefits of short (1 to 2 minute) bouts of vigorous exercise in people who do not consider themselves to be exercisers, and who report not taking part in exercise in their leisure time. Prof David Stensel, Professor of Exercise Metabolism, Loughborough University, said: Expert reaction to study looking at short bursts of vigorous physical activity and risk of deathĪ study published in Nature Medicine looks at wearable device-measured vigorous physical activity and mortality.
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