Vigorous physical activity, incident heart disease, and cancer: how little is enough?

PainSci » bibliography » Ahmadi et al 2022
updated Oct 2, 2023

Tags: exercise, inflam-sys, good news, sedentariness, self-treatment, treatment

Four pages on PainSci cite Ahmadi 2022: 1. The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain 2. What Works for Chronic Pain? 3. Preventing arthritis and tendinitis is easier than you think (with patience) 4. Three happy exercise studies for pain patients

PainSci notes on Ahmadi 2022:

This is of those morbid mortality studies, a big one cross-referencing deaths with fitness gadget data for tens of thousands of people. People died less if they did frequent small doses of vigorous exercise — less than 2-minute sessions, and only one or two per day. Intense and regular, but just little blasts of action. The benefits became measurable at 15-minutes per week, and continued to improve up to a total of an hour per week (or 4 mini workouts per day).

Note that “all-cause mortality” definitely overlaps with the “reduced systemic inflammation” measured by Klasson et al. Taming inflammation was probably partly how mortality was reduced.

original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.

AIMS: Vigorous physical activity (VPA) is a time-efficient way to achieve recommended physical activity levels. There is a very limited understanding of the minimal and optimal amounts of vigorous physical activity in relation to mortality and disease incidence.

METHODS AND

RESULTS: A prospective study in 71 893 adults [median age (IQR): 62.5 years (55.3, 67.7); 55.9% female] from the UK Biobank cohort with wrist-worn accelerometry. VPA volume (min/week) and frequency of short VPA bouts (≤2 min) were measured. The dose-response associations of VPA volume and frequency with mortality [all-cause, cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer], and CVD and cancer incidence were examined after excluding events occurring in the first year. During a mean post-landmark point follow-up of 5.9 years (SD ± 0.8), the adjusted 5-year absolute mortality risk was 4.17% (95% confidence interval: 3.19%, 5.13%) for no VPA, 2.12% (1.81%, 2.44%) for>0 to <10 min, 1.78% (1.53%, 2.03%) for 10 to <30 min, 1.47% (1.21%, 1.73%) for 30 to <60 min, and 1.10% (0.84%, 1.36%) for ≥60 min. The 'optimal dose' (nadir of the curve) was 53.6 (50.5, 56.7) min/week [hazard ratio (HR): 0.64 (0.54, 0.77)] relative to the 5th percentile reference (2.2 min/week). There was an inverse linear dose-response association of VPA with CVD mortality. The 'minimal' volume dose (50% of the optimal dose) was ∼15 (14.3, 16.3) min/week for all-cause [HR: 0.82 (0.75, 0.89)] and cancer [HR: 0.84 (0.74, 0.95)] mortality, and 19.2 (16.5, 21.9) min/week [HR: 0.60 (0.50, 0.72)] for CVD mortality. These associations were consistent for CVD and cancer incidence. There was an inverse linear association between VPA frequency and CVD mortality. 27 (24, 30) bouts/week was associated with the lowest all-cause mortality [HR: 0.73 (0.62, 0.87)].

CONCLUSION: VPA of 15-20 min/week were associated with a 16-40% lower mortality HR, with further decreases up to 50-57 min/week. These findings suggest reduced health risks may be attainable through relatively modest amounts of VPA accrued in short bouts across the week.

original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.

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