This winter, it is quite possible that the falling mercury will dampen your sporting enthusiasm.
Rest assured that the most cautious, sometimes just a few changes, and even a handful of minutes, to optimize our form, even our longevity.
This is suggested by an Australian study, published Thursday, December 8 in the journal
Nature Medicine
.
According to their authors, researchers from the Charles Perkins Center at the University of Sydney, the fact of performing a seemingly fairly banal but intense and repeated daily movement, such as taking the stairs or walking your dog, is associated with a significant reduction in the risk of early death.
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Minimum three minutes per day
To arrive at this result, the scientists scrutinized the physical activity levels of more than 25,000 participants from the UK Biobank database for seven days, using sensors attached to the wrist.
Originally, these volunteers were selected on the basis that they did not participate in sports or exercise in their spare time.
After the experiment ended, the researchers continued to track the participants' health data for seven years.
At the end of this analysis, it was found that people who practice vigorous physical movements for one to two minutes on a daily basis, three to four times a day during the week, see their risk of death reduced by 38% to 40% compared to those who do not practice any physical activity, even light.
This observation applies to all causes of death combined, including cancer.
In addition, the intensity of the movement is also associated with a decrease in the risk of death from cardiovascular disease by about 48%, notes the Australian team.
In video, 10 indoor sports to practice in winter
Walk, play, move
Although this study remains observational, with no demonstrated causal link, the researchers believe that it is consistent with other previous scientific research results on the benefits of intense activity, in particular those on the effects of high intensity interval training (HIIT).
In March 2022, Canadian-American work, published in the journal
Frontiers in Physiology
, advanced, for example, that high-intensity, fractional muscle strengthening, carried out without equipment, would work the heart and muscles as much as running on a treadmill.
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The challenge here is therefore to move as much as possible on a daily basis.
But how ?
“A few very short movements, totaling three to four minutes a day, can do a lot of good, and there are many daily activities that can be modified to increase heart rate for one to two minutes,” says in a press release Emmanuel Stamatakis, lead author of the study and professor of physical activity, lifestyle and population health at the Charles Perkins Center at the University of Sidney.
For example, you can speed up the pace by walking during shopping or walking your dog, run to take the bus or train, do housework or even play with your children in a more energetic way, advises Emmanuel Stamatakis.
So many good
