• April 25, 2024

Activities such as gardening, projects and homework could be as good as formal exercise when it comes to reducing the risk of heart attack and stroke, researchers say. Swedish School of Sports and Health Sciences and the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm.

According to the study, people whose daily activities kept them moving reduced their risk of heart attack or stroke by 27%, and the risk of dying of any cause by 30%, compared to people who spent the least amount of time. standing time.

Everyday activity

"Being seated mainly replaces the time spent in daily activity, and vice versa," says Elin Ekblom-Bak, leader of the research. "The activities of daily life are as important as regular exercise for young adults, for their cardiovascular health and longevity," he said.

However, that does not mean that the formal exercise is not important. "We saw that those who exercised daily on a regular basis and who also had a physically active lifestyle were the ones with the lowest risk of all," explained Ekblom-Bak.

"Encouraging daily activities is as important as recommending regular exercise to older adults for cardiovascular health and longevity," he said.

"This is particularly important for older adults, because they tend to spend a greater part of their active day doing physical activity that is not exercise, since they often find it difficult to achieve the intensity levels recommended for them," he said.

"It's almost expected that, as we get older, we will move less," he said. Samantha Heller, clinical nutritionist and physiologist of the main exercise of the Langone Medical Center of NYU , in the city of New York.

"Unfortunately, now sedentary lifestyles occur in all ages, with the same unhealthy results: an increased risk of diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and certain cancers."

The human body is designed to move for a good part of the day, Heller said. "The less you physically move, the less able you are to move," he warned.

Regular physical activities such as cleaning the house, gardening, lawn care and climbing stairs keep the body mobile and strong, said Heller. "You can burn up to six times more energy per minute by cleaning the house than sitting quietly." People of all ages should be encouraged to get off the couch and turn off the computer and television, and move, "he said.

Heller said there are simple ways to increase the physical activity of the day, such as standing up to talk on the phone, archery while watching television, getting up from the desk every hour and doing scissor jumping, lifting or bending on your knees for 3 to 5 minutes; Climb a flight of stairs every few hours, vacuum, scrub the floor.

For his part, Dr. Gregg Fonarow, professor of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that sitting too long could have adverse effects that include burning fewer calories and increasing insulin resistance and blood fats. .