A Surprisingly Short Period of Inactivity Can Damage Your Health, Scientists Learn

By Tori Sprung   at  inverse.com

Photo by Joanes Andueza on Unsplash

As a society, we aren’t getting as much exercise as we should. In fact, current activity guidelines state that adults should get at least 150 minutes of moderately intense activity — or 75 minutes of vigorous activity — every week. But research has found that one in four adults aren’t active enough.

It’s easy to see why. Many of us drive to work instead of walking — and for those of us who work desk jobs, many are often so focused on what we’re doing, we rarely get up from our desks except to visit the bathroom or get a drink. In short, though we might be busy, we aren’t moving very much. But after dealing with the stress of work week after week, it’s easy to daydream about unwinding on a warm beach, doing nothing but lounging around for a fortnight. But this might not be what our bodies need. In fact, it might actually be more harmful than we realize.

Our research looked at what effect even short periods of physical inactivity had on our bodies. We found that even just two weeks of low activity actually increased participants’ risk of later developing serious health conditions such as cardiovascular disease.

Keeping active

We know that physical activity is good for us. This is irrefutable, and we’ve known this for a long time. As far back as the 1950s, the link between day-to-day physical activity and health was first identified in the London transport workers study.

The study found that bus drivers were more likely to experience a heart attack compared to their bus conductor counterparts. The main difference between these two groups was that conductors spent their working day on their feet collecting fares from commuters, while bus drivers spent their days sitting down.

Since then, some have branded physical activity a “miracle cure” for cardiovascular risk. Yet, as a society, we are more sedentary than ever, and cardiovascular-related deaths remain the leading cause of death worldwide.

While we know that having a physically active lifestyle will improve our health, surely we aren’t doing any additional harm, even if we choose not to be physically active? We decided to examine exactly what the harmful effects of being physically inactive are.

For our study, we recruited young (aged 18-50 years), healthy weight (BMI less than 30), physically active individuals (meaning that they take more than 10,000 steps per day on average). After carrying out assessments to measure blood vessel health, body composition, and blood sugar control, we asked them to become inactive for two weeks.

Researchers assessed study participants’ health results after two weeks with a step counter.

To achieve this, participants were provided with a step counter and asked not to exceed 1,500 steps per day, which equates to approximately two laps of a full sized football pitch. After two weeks, we reassessed their blood vessel health, body composition, and blood sugar control to examine what effects two weeks of inactivity had on them. We then asked them to resume their usual routine and behaviors. Two weeks after resuming their normal daily lifestyles, we checked participants’ health markers to see if they’d returned to where they were when they’d started the trial.

Our group of participants successfully reduced their step count by an average of around 10,000 steps per day and, in doing so, increased their waking sedentary time by an average of 103 minutes per day. Artery function decreased following this two-week period of relative inactivity, but returned to their normal levels after two weeks following their usual lifestyles.

We were interested in seeing how activity levels influenced blood vessel health, since this is where most cardiovascular disease starts. Most of us don’t realize that our blood vessels are a complex system. They’re lined with muscle and constantly adapt to our needs by dilating (opening) and constricting (closing) to distribute blood where it’s most needed. For example, during exercise, vessels feeding organs such as the stomach will constrict, as it is inactive at this time, and so blood is redistributed to our working muscles to fuel movement. One of the earliest detectable signs of cardiovascular risk is a reduced function of this dilatory capacity.

To measure this, we used an imaging technique called flow-mediated dilation or FMD. FMD measures how well the arteries dilate and constrict, and it has been found to predict our future cardiovascular risk.

Heart health

We found that after as little as two weeks of inactivity there was a reduction in artery function. This indicates the start of cardiovascular disease development as a result of being inactive. We also observed an increase in traditional risk factors, such as body fat, waist circumference, fitness, and diabetes markers, including liver fat and insulin sensitivity.

Something we also observed — which we initially weren’t researching —was that resuming normal activity levels following two weeks of being physically inactive was below baseline. That is to say, our participants did not return back to normal within two weeks of completing the intervention.

This is interesting to consider, especially regarding the potential longer-term effects of acute physical inactivity. In real-world terms, acute physical inactivity could mean a bout of flu or a two-week beach holiday — anything that can have a potential longer-term effect on our usual habits and behavior.

These results show us that we need to make changes to public health messages and emphasize the harmful effect of even short-term physical inactivity. Small alterations to daily living can have a significant impact on health — positively or negatively. People should be encouraged to increase their physical activity levels, in any way possible. Simply increasing daily physical activity can have measurable benefits. This could include having a 10-minute walk during your lunch hour, standing from your desk on an hourly basis to break up sitting time, or parking your car at the back of the supermarket parking lot to get more steps in.

The impact of spending a large proportion of the day being inactive has received a lot of research in recent years. In fact, it has become a hot point of discussion among exercise scientists. As technology advances and our lives become increasingly geared towards convenience, it’s important this kind of research continues.

The health consequences of sedentary behavior are severe and numerous. Moving more in everyday life could be key in improving your overall health.

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Downsizing to an Early Death? Why Exercise is So Important as You Age

Photo by Justin Clark on Unsplash

well-documented that regular exercise is good for us. Being active can reduce your risk for a variety of diseases such as heart disease and cancer, as well as improving psychological well-being.

Current guidelines from the World Health Organization recommend getting 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per week. This works out to about 20 to 30 minutes per day of activity like brisk walking, swimming or playing tennis.

It’s not much of a time commitment yet most people don’t achieve it. Barely 20 per cent of Canadians are considered physically active according to national guidelines. And if things in Canada are the same as in the United States, this number likely hasn’t changed in the past 15 years.

The good news is that the very best time to start exercising is now. Research from the United States and the United Kingdom reveals that middle-aged and older adults can reduce their risk of death by becoming more physically active, irrespective of past physical activity levels.

Why we exercise less as we age

Hidden among these statistics on physical activity is how much it decreases with age. As an adult, our activity usually peaks in our 20s. After that, there is a steady decline in vigorous activity (exercise that increases heart rate) throughout life, while light physical activity (such as easy walking) stays relatively constant until around 60 years of age and then declines. In addition, sedentary time increases.

Many will argue this is part of the ageing process: we get weaker as we age and therefore we can’t do as much vigorous activity.

However, the physiological changes in our body with age likely only account for a small portion in the decline in activity. People who remain active see only a fraction of the decrease in fitness compared to their inactive counterparts.

Much of this decrease in activity is due to conscious and unconscious changes in life circumstances. In our 20s, we’re more likely to have been engaged in competitive and recreational sports, rely more on transit and active transportation as we cannot afford our own car. Our entry-level jobs are more active, but as we progress up the career ladder, we’re likely to spend more time sitting at a desk.

Downsizing to an early death?

Retirement is also another significant stage at which time most people experience a further decrease in activity. Even if one’s job was sedentary, it usually provides a small amount of activity and unless a conscious effort is made to make that activity up in retirement, it will be lost.

Many people also downsize their home in retirement, perhaps moving to a one-story apartment and losing their yard. While there may be good reasons for downsizing, it also results in further decreases in activity as there are no stairs to take or yard to manage. Some people downsize purposely thinking they should be doing less activity.

As activity decreases, so does our fitness and strength levels. Because of those changes, we become even less capable of doing activities we did when we were younger, so we further decrease our activity, and the cycle continues.

As a result, risk factors such as high blood pressure, obesity and high blood sugar may appear — increasing our risk for disease and early death.

It’s how much you exercise now that matters

However, it’s not all bad. Our body can also adapt to increasing activity. And when it comes to exercise and health, what you have done lately is more important than what you did years or decades ago.

A study of more than 300,000 men and women aged 50 to 71 living in the U.S. divided participants into maintainers (high level of leisure activity throughout life), decreasers (high activity in teens and low in later life) and increasers (low activity in teens and high in later life).

Of the three groups, maintainers had the lowest risk for early death, but the increasers had a similar benefit. The decreasers didn’t fare much better than people who were inactive their entire life.

What matters is how much activity you do now.

When looking at total physical activity (leisure activity combined with occupational activity), similar results were reported among 15,000 people in the U.K.

Again, what mattered most was how much activity people were doing most recently, not 25 years earlier. Those who increased their activity had the lowest risk for early death, even if their previous activity levels were high to begin with. In addition, people with heart disease or cancer also benefited to the same extent as those without.

Walk for 20 minutes a day

Beginning, or even restarting, an exercise program in middle-age or later can be daunting. From time to time we’ll hear inspiring stories of people starting their first marathon in their 70s but these people are the exception and not everyone needs (or wants) to be exercising that much.

We demonstrated that as little as 20 minutes of brisk walking per day can result in a 20 per cent reduction in early death over seven years. If you increase to 90 minutes of walking or 25 minutes of running, you get a 35 per cent reduction.

However, the greatest gains come from doing nothing to doing something. And every little bit helps throughout the day, not just the time you go to the gym or do a run. Taking the stairs, going for a walk on your lunch or parking farther away all add up.

Scott Lear writes the weekly blog Feeling Healthy with Dr. Scott Lear.

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