Although there are still jobs that require a lot of physical activity, more and more professions basically consist of spending eight hours a day in an office chair. That, of course, is a way of sedentary lifestyle and can have very negative health consequences. For this reason, there are more and more campaigns aimed at raising awareness of these workers for them to do some physical exercise every day. It is certainly a good solution. However, according to a recently published study by scientists at the columbia universityit is also important to minimize the hours that the worker sits without rest.
For this, they usually recommend what are known as exercise snacks. Come on, instead of getting up to the coffee or snack machine, they do it to walk a little or do some other physical exercise. There are multiple exercises aimed at analyzing the effects of these snacks. However, several options are not usually compared.
That is why this new research is so interesting. which has been published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. In it, different options are compared, in which the exercise time and distance are varied. Finally, it is concluded that the optimal is to walk 5 minutes every half hour. It may seem tedious, but the truth is that it even managed to improve the mood of the participants.
The best physical exercise for office workers
In this study, 11 people participated, without previous health problems, with ages between 40 and 60 years. All of them had to spend eight hours sitting in an ergonomic chair, similar to those used by office workers.
In that time they were able to read, look at their mobile phone or use the computer. However, in the meantime they had to do four types of rest. a walk from one minute every 30 or 60 minutesor a walk five minutes every 30 or 60 minutes. In any case, this exercise was done on a treadmill, but it could be replaced by a walk.
To see how this had influenced his health, periodic measurements were taken of your blood sugar and blood pressure, since both are very good markers of cardiometabolic health. Thus, it was observed that the best results were obtained with walks of five minutes every half hour. In fact, in this way the sugar spikes of meals were reduced by 58% and blood pressure decreased between 4 and 5 mm Hg. Walking for 1 minute every half hour also led to improvements in these markers, although not as significant. On the other hand, if the workers’ physical exercise snacks were done every hour, there were no remarkable benefits.
fast results
The improvements obtained were comparable to exercise daily for six months. Therefore, although exercising outside of work hours is highly recommended, very good results can be obtained, in less time, with these curious snacks.
However, since it is somewhat unconventional, which could be annoying, it was also evaluated mood, fatigue and cognitive performance of the participants during the test. Thus, it was seen that in all cases, except for walking one minute every hour, mood improved and fatigue was reduced. They are all advantages.
The next step for these scientists will be to repeat the experiment with more participants, of more varied ages and different health states. It would be interesting, for example, to see how it affects those who already have a cardiometabolic health problem. Also, they plan to test more than 20 different combinations, for the perfect workout snack. Times change and workers spend more time sitting down, but we must not give in to a sedentary lifestyle. There are solutions, now all that remains is to find the best one.