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Games with the children, household chores, or brisk walking… It doesn’t matter, from the moment these activities make you breathe, they would be essential to prevent certain diseases. A new study reveals that four to five minutes of these intense daily physical activities would be associated with a significant reduction in the risk of cancer.
In terms of physical activity, the guideline of the World Health Organization is clear: an adult aged 18 to 64 is supposed to engage in moderate-intensity endurance activity for at least 150 to 300 minutes per week, and limit sedentary time. It is in any case the bare minimum to preserve its overall health. But a new study led by the University of Sydney, Australia, looked more specifically at the impact of “vigorous lifestyle intermittent physical activity” (VILPA), a phrase coined by Australian researchers to qualify strenuous household chores, carrying heavy errands, or brisk walking on cancer risk.
Published in the journal JAMA Oncology, their work was based on data from portable activity monitoring devices of 22,398 people aged 62 on average who did not exercise during their leisure time. Information that they then coupled with the follow-up of the clinical health records of the participants, and this for nearly seven years to determine whether or not they were affected by cancer. As a result, they now estimate between four to five minutes the duration of vigorous physical activity necessary to reduce the risk of certain cancers by up to 32%.
An effective and free activity
“We know that the majority of middle-aged people do not exercise regularly, which puts them at increased risk of cancer. But it is only with the advent of wearable technology, such as activity trackers, that we are able to study the impact of short bursts of occasional physical activity performed as part of everyday life. . Quite remarkably, increasing the intensity of daily tasks for just four to five minutes a day, in short breaks of around one minute each, is linked to an overall reduction in cancer risk.“, explains Professor Emmanuel Stamatakis, lead author of the study, in a press release.
In more detail, of the 22,398 participants in the study, the researchers observed 2,356 new cases of cancer over an average follow-up of 6.7 years, including 1,084 cancers related to physical activity (liver, lung, kidney, bladder, breast, in particular). They also determined that 3.5 minutes of vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity per day was enough to reduce the risk of cancer by 18%, compared to participants not practicing any at all, and that 4.5 minutes per day reduced the risk of cancers related to physical activity by 32%.
“We need to investigate this link further with strong trials, but it appears that lifestyle vigorous intermittent physical activity may be a promising and cost-free recommendation for reducing cancer risk in people for whom structured exercise is difficult or unattractive“, concludes Professor Stamatakis.