If you spend most of your day at a desk or cubicle, just 20 minutes of physical activity could be enough to lower your risk of a premature death.
Physical inactivity and sedentary lifestyles are leading risk factors for a "heightened risk of death", and in developed nations, adults spend an average of nine to 10 hours every day sitting down, mostly for work.
But new research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine says just 20 to 25 minutes can help people bring that risk down.
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Just short of 12,000 people aged at least 50 were included in the analysis.
They had a minimum of four days of 10 daily hours of activity tracker records, had been monitored for at least two years, and had provided details of potentially influential factors: their sex, educational level, weight, height, smoking history, alcohol intake, and whether they had current and/or previous cardiovascular disease, cancer and/or diabetes.
In all, 5943 people spent fewer than 10.5 hours sitting down every day; 6042 clocked up 10.5 or more sedentary hours.
The analysis of the activity tracker data showed that being sedentary for more than 12 hours a day was associated with a 38 per cent heightened risk of death compared with a daily tally of eight hours—but only among those totting up fewer than 22 daily minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity.
And more than 22 daily minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity was associated with a lower risk of death, regardless of how many hours somebody spent sitting down.
"Small amounts of MVPA [moderate to vigorous physical activity] may be an effective strategy to ameliorate the mortality risk from high sedentary time, where accumulating more than 22 mins of MVPA eliminates the risk of high sedentary time," the researchers wrote.
"Efforts to promote physical activity may have substantial health benefits for individuals."
