PainRelief.com Interview with:
MARK HAMER, PhD
PROFESSOR OF SPORT AND EXERCISE MEDICINE
DIVISION OF SURGERY & INTERVENTIONAL SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

PainRelief.com: Can you provide more insight into how much more beneficial moderate to vigorous activities are compared to light activities or standing, in terms of measurable health outcomes?

Response: Our study suggests that the best activity that you can do for your heart is moderate-vigorous activity, followed by a trio of common daily activities: lighter activity, standing and sleeping, with sedentary behaviour being the most harmful. There was a very large and strong association between spending more time in moderate to vigorous activities and better heart health outcomes (outcomes included: BMI, waist circumference, HDL cholesterol, HDL: total cholesterol ratio, triglycerides and blood glucose levels).

For example, replacing 30 min of sedentary behaviour with moderate to vigorous activity was associated with 0.63kg/m2 lower BMI (or –2.4cm lower waist circumference). If an individual were to replace the sedentary time with 30 minutes of light activity instead, we would expect to see a ~0.5 kg/m2 lower BMI. And if an individual replaced their sedentary time with 30 min of either standing or sleep, we would expect to see a ~0.4kg/m2 decrease.  These difference in benefits was much larger when considering cholesterol and triglyceride outcomes.

It was notable that heart health benefits are likely to be observed after replacing just a few minutes of sedentary/sitting time with moderate to vigorous activity. However, to achieve comparable benefits with standing or light activity, it could require 1-3 hours of replacement depending on the outcome (slightly less for measures of obesity such as BMI, much more for cardiometabolic blood biomarkers like cholesterol or triglycerides).