Carry Your Groceries, Take the Stairs: Short, Intense Movement Can Improve Your Health (plus non drug ways to fight diabetes and Covid)

A new study confirms that you don’t have to do a hard workout to reap the longevity rewards of exercise.

By Dani Blum of The NY Times. Excerpts:

"Dashing up the stairs to your apartment, weaving between commuters as you dart toward the train — those small snippets of exercise, if they’re intense enough, can add up, according to a new study. The paper is among the first to examine what many exercise scientists have long hypothesized: A little bit of physical activity goes a long way, even movement you might not consider a workout.

The paper, published today in Nature Medicine, shows that tiny spurts of exercise throughout the day are associated with significant reductions in disease risk. Researchers used data from fitness trackers collected by UK Biobank, a large medical database with health information from people across the United Kingdom. They looked at the records of over 25,000 people who did not regularly exercise, with an average age around 60, and followed them over the course of nearly seven years. (People who walked recreationally once a week were included, but that was the maximum amount of concerted exercise these participants did.)

Those who engaged in one or two-minute bursts of exercise roughly three times a day, like speed-walking while commuting to work or rapidly climbing stairs, showed a nearly 50 percent reduction in cardiovascular mortality risk and a roughly 40 percent reduction in the risk of dying from cancer as well as all causes of mortality, compared with those who did no vigorous spurts of fitness."

"One 2020 study linked four-minute bursts of exercise with longer life spans; another in 2019 found that climbing stairs for 20 seconds, multiple times a day, improved aerobic fitness. And still others have found that repeating just four-second intervals of intense activity could increase strength or counteract the metabolic toll of sitting for long stretches of time."

"the average person doesn’t need to go out of their way to identify those small spikes in activity; everyday movements, intensified, can be enough."

"If you have a roughly half mile-long walk — for example, from your apartment to the grocery store — you don’t need to sprint the entire time, he said, but accelerate your pace for a few hundred feet two or three times over the course of your walk. Instead of taking the elevator, opt for the stairs. As long as you go up more than one or two flights, that will count as vigorous activity. Carrying roughly five percent of your body weight for a minute or two can also qualify, like hauling a large backpack"

"And any kind of brief, fast uphill walking can also provide a short spurt of intense exercise."

Also see Intermittent fasting may negate need for diabetes drugs, small study suggests by Judy Packer-Tursman of UPI. Excerpts:

"People with Type 2 diabetes who fast intermittently may no longer need medication, a small study suggests.

After an intermittent fasting diet intervention, most patients in the study achieved complete diabetes remission -- defined as having a stable HbA1c, or average blood sugar, level of less than 6.5% for at least three months -- after discontinuing all anti-diabetic medications. 

This is according to findings published Wednesday in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

"Type 2 diabetes is not necessarily a permanent, lifelong disease. Diabetes remission is possible if patients lose weight by changing their diet and exercise habits," Dongbo Liu, the study's corresponding author and a professor at Hunan Agricultural University in Changsha, China, said in a news release."

Study: Every little bit of physical activity counts in avoiding severe COVID-19 by Judy Packer-Tursman of UPI. Excerpts:

"People who were more physically active before being diagnosed with COVID-19 -- even those with chronic illness -- had a lower risk of severe outcomes, according to a large-scale study of Kaiser Permanente plan members.

The managed care system's research findings were published Thursday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. 

"The results of this study document substantially higher odds of hospitalization, deterioration events and death with lower amounts of self-reported physical activity," the research paper says.

People "who were consistently inactive were 191% more likely to be hospitalized and 391% more likely to die than those who were consistently active," the researchers said. 

Moreover, the higher odds of severe COVID-19 outcomes among physically inactive people were generally consistent across "all racial and ethnic categories, in most age categories, in all BMI [body mass index] categories, and for patients with and without diagnoses of cardiovascular disease or hypertension."  

"The main message is that every little bit of physical activity counts. The more exercise the better, no matter a person's race, ethnicity, age, sex, or chronic conditions," Deborah Rohm Young, the study's lead author, said in a news release."

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New research leads to doubt over the extent or even existence of the ego‐depletion effect (the theory of the exhaustible willpower muscle) (2019)

How lifestyle changes can reduce the risk of dementia (2019)

Good health begins with individual decisions (2018)

Nearly half of U.S. cancer deaths blamed on unhealthy behavior (2017)

Regular Exercise: Antidote for Deadly Diseases? (2016)