man exercising at home
This entry was posted in Lifestyle, Mental Health on by .
LinkedIn

Summary: Yes, 5 minutes of exercise a couple times a day can make a difference, even if you’re sedentary and never exercise at all. Fitness researchers call these short sessions exercise snacks and refer to them as snacktivities.

Key Points:

  • The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advise people to get at least an hour and a half of moderate activity per week, and just over an hour of vigorous activity per week.
  • The CDC advises that for people with a sedentary lifestyle, or older adults who don’t exercise, a little exercise is better than no exercise, and anything is better than nothing.
  • A new study examines whether “a little is better than none” by measuring the effect of doing at least two short, <5-minute exercise sessions per day, called exercise snacks or snacktivities.

Starting Small: Snacktvity is Real Exercise

The positive effects of regular exercise are well-documented. Getting plenty of daily activity – and following the CDC guidelines we list above – can lead to significant benefits for physical, emotional, and cognitive health.

The guidelines are clear and the benefits are clear. However, research on weekly exercise among adults 18+ in the U.S. shows the following:

  • Over half – 53.9% – don’t get enough moderate intensity activity each week.
  • Over three-quarters – 75.8% – don’t get enough vigorous activity each week.

In other words, most of us fall short. People who are semi-active can step up their exercise game and meet the guidelines without too much extra work or stress. However, for some people, regular exercise and activity is not, and perhaps never has been, a part of their daily life, or part of their lives at all.

They live what health experts call a sedentary lifestyle.

The CDC indicates that for people who lead a sedentary lifestyle, even a little bit of exercise – preferably every day – is better than no exercise at all. When they say this, it sounds like they’re just saying it to get people motivated and get them off the couch.

But a group of researchers in Europe decided to conduct a study on that topic and learn whether a little bit of exercise is really better than none. Let’s take a look at the study and learn what they found: for sedentary adults, can 5 minutes of exercise a couple times a day make a difference?

Can Snacktivity be Real Exercise? The Impact of Twice Daily Snacktivity

In a study called “Effect Of Exercise Snacks on Fitness and Cardiometabolic Health in Physically Inactive Individuals: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” a group of researchers designed a meta-analysis with the following research goal:

“To evaluate the effects of brief bouts of exercise spread throughout the day, termed ‘exercise snacks’, on cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, and cardiometabolic health outcomes in physically inactive adults and older adults.”

The research team analyzed data from over 700 adults from 11 random control trials (RCTs) that measured the impact of two types exercise on overall health:

  • Vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity (VILPA): This refers to intermittent, short, intense bouts of activity associated with daily tasks, such as carrying heavy groceries or brisk walking to/from a destination. This type of exercise snack is unplanned and unstructured.
  • Exercise snacks: This refers to intermittent, short bouts of activity such as climbing stairs or body weight exercises. Body weight exercises are things like pushups, squats, or triceps dips on a chair. In contrast to VILPS, this type of exercise is both structured and planned.

To meet study criteria, the researchers included participants who completed at least two exercise snacks a day, three times a week or more, for two weeks or more.

Researchers evaluated the impact of snacktivity on the following primary outcomes:

  • Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF)
  • Muscular strength and endurance
  • blood lipid profiles (total cholesterol (TC)
  • high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C)
  • low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and triglycerides
  • body mass index
  • body fat percentage
  • fat distribution

Next, researchers evaluated the impact of snacktivity on the following secondary outcomes:

  • Balance
  • Blood pressure
  • Anxiety
  • Depressive symptoms
  • Vitality and life satisfaction
  • Compliance/adherence to the interventions

Here’s what they found:

  • Compared to control groups, exercise snacks had a significant, moderate, positive impact on cardiorespiratory fitness.
  • Compared to control groups, exercise snacks had a significant – but low – positive impact on muscular endurance

Exercise snacks had no impact on any other metric, aside from adherence: 83 percent of participants followed the snacktivity protocol for at least two weeks.

We’ll discuss these results below.

Less Than Five Minutes of Snacktivity Helps

Here’s how the research team characterizes the results of their analysis:

“Based on a rigorous systematic review with meta-analysis of RCTs, moderate certainty of evidence supports the efficacy of exercise snacks in eliciting improvements in CRF among physically inactive adults. Although statistically significant effects on muscular endurance have been observed in older populations, the overall certainty of this evidence was very low.”

The results tell the story. Something is better than nothing, and a little bit of exercise is better than staying on the couch. This data is important, and quantifies the advice offered by the CDC and various health and wellness experts. It’s especially salient for sedentary adults, who may think starting small is pointless, and believe they need to start with long, difficult exercise sessions.

The fact is that they don’t: 5 minutes of exercise a couple times a day can make a difference.  It’s enough for moderate improvements in cardiovascular health and small improvements in muscular endurance. People with a sedentary lifestyle can now believe – because the numbers prove it – that starting with a little bit every day has a real effect, and can create a foundation for a new, healthier lifestyle.