March 1, 2023 – A short daily walk or a long walk once a week is enough to lower the chance of having a heart attack, a stroke, or getting cancer, new research shows.
Exercising for 75 minutes per week reduced the risk of heart disease by 17% and the risk of cancer by 7%, according to the study, which was published this week in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The time commitment works out to be 10 to 11 minutes per day.
More exercise offered even wider protection. Exercising for 150 minutes per week reduced the chance of early death due to any cause by 16%. The exercise intensity for the study was equivalent to a brisk walk.
“We know that physical activity, such as walking or cycling, is good for you, especially if you feel it raises your heart rate. But what we’ve found is there are substantial benefits to heart health and reducing your risk of cancer even if you can only manage 10 minutes every day,” researcher James Woodcock, PhD, said in a statement.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, who did the study, sought to understand just how much exercise was needed to have a meaningful health benefit. They pooled the data from 94 previous studies on the topic, and analyzed the combined data for more than 30 million participants.
Sometimes, two research studies on the same topic offer conflicting advice, the researchers noted. By combining such a large number of studies, the certainty of the statistical analysis is improved because there is more data, so the bigger study can overcome conflicting findings from smaller studies.
In this latest analysis, the researchers found that at least 75 minutes of weekly exercise particularly protected against specific cancers, reducing the risk of head and neck, myeloid leukemia, myeloma, and gastric cardia cancers by 14% to 26%. They also calculated that if everyone in the study had done at least 150 minutes of weekly exercise, around 1 in 6 early deaths could have been prevented, or 1 in 10 deaths with just 75 minutes per week.
“If you are someone who finds the idea of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week a bit daunting, then our findings should be good news,” said researcher Søren Brage, PhD. “Doing some physical activity is better than doing none. This is also a good starting position – if you find that 75 minutes a week is manageable, then you could try stepping it up gradually to the full recommended amount.”
