People have a pretty intuitive idea that standing is better than sitting, exercise is great for overall health and good sleep is a must.
However, if evening exercise can disrupt our sleep or make us feel the need to be more sedentary to recover, a key question arises as to how best to balance our 24 hours to optimize our health ?
Our research sought to answer this for risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes. We found that the optimal amount of sleep was 8.3 hours, while for light activity and moderate to vigorous activity, it was best to get 2.2 hours each.
Find the right balance
Current health guidelines recommend a reasonable regimen of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for 2.55 hours per week.
However, growing evidence now suggests that how you spend your day can have significant ramifications for your health. In addition to moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, this means time spent sitting, standing, doing light physical activity (such as walking around the house or office), and sleeping.
Our research looked at more than 2,000 adults who wore body sensors that could interpret their physical behaviors over seven days. This gave us an idea of how their average 24 hours were spent.
At the start of the study, participants’ waist circumference, blood sugar and insulin sensitivity were measured. The body sensor and assessment data were compared and analyzed and then tested against health risk markers such as a heart disease and stroke risk score to create a model.
Using this model, we fed thousands of 24-hour permutations and found the ones with the lowest estimated associations with heart disease risk and blood glucose levels. This created many optimal mixes of sitting, standing, light and moderate intensity activity.
When we looked at waist circumference, blood sugar, insulin sensitivity and a heart disease and stroke risk score, we saw different optimal time zones. When these zones overlapped each other, the optimal zone for heart disease and diabetes risk was assigned.
You are doing more physical activity than you think
We found that light-intensity physical activity (defined as walking less than 100 steps per minute), such as walking to the water cooler, the bathroom, or casually walking with friends, had a strong association with control of glucose, and especially in people with type 2 diabetes. This light-intensity physical activity is likely to accumulate intermittently throughout the day rather than being purposeful light exercise.
Our experimental evidence shows that regularly breaking up our sitting with light physical activity (like taking a 35-minute walk every hour) can improve our metabolism, especially after lunch.
Although moderate-to-vigorous physical activity time may seem quite high, at more than 2 hours per day, we defined it as more than 100 steps per minute. This is equivalent to a brisk walk.
It should be noted that these findings are preliminary. This is the first study on the risk of heart disease and diabetes and the optimal 24 hours, and the results will need further confirmation with longer prospective studies.
The data are also cross-sectional. This means that estimates of time use are correlated with disease risk factors, meaning it is unclear whether the way participants spent their time influences their risk factors or whether these risk factors influence how someone spends their time.
Australian adult physical activity guidelines need to be updated
Australian physical activity guidelines currently only recommend exercise intensity and duration. A new set of guidelines is being developed to incorporate the 24-hour movement. Australians will soon be able to use these guidelines to examine their 24 hours and understand where they can make improvements.
While our new research may inform future guidelines, we must keep in mind that the recommendations are like a North Star: something to aim for to improve your health. In principle, this means reducing sitting time whenever possible, increasing standing and light-intensity physical activity, increasing more vigorous-intensity physical activity, and aiming for a healthy 7.59 hours of sleep per night.
Beneficial changes could come in the form of reducing screen time in the evening or opting for an active commute instead of the daily car commute, or prioritizing bedtime over watching TV in the evening.
It’s also important to recognize that these are recommendations for an able-bodied adult. We all have different considerations and above all, movement should be fun.
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Image Source : theconversation.com