fitness
This is what happens in your body when you exercise for 11 minutes a day
With just 11 minutes of exercise a day you can make a big difference.
© ViDi Studio / Adobe Stock
If you want to be fit, you have to suffer? No, just a little exercise every day is enough to reduce a variety of health risks.
But what does it look like in practice? Most of the time it’s quite different, because especially for people for whom sport has not already become a permanent part of their everyday life, the idea of regular exercise is anything but exciting. So now you’re not only supposed to get through a strenuous day, but also do a strenuous workout? Anything but a tempting thought for many!
But what do most people think of when they think of fitness? Instinctively, they think of gyms, strenuous training sessions or long runs. But one study proves the opposite: just eleven minutes of moderate to intense physical activity can reduce the risk of premature death, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Study proves: A few minutes have a big impact
As already mentioned: Most of us have theoretical knowledge that regular exercise reduces the risk of contracting serious diseases. There are also plenty of studies on this. What was more difficult to prove was how much of an impact does the amount of exercise have on the risk of disease? Scientists have now addressed this issue in a study in which 196 other studies with a total of more than 30 million adult test subjects were evaluated.
The focus was on people who were physically active for at least 150 minutes per week (that’s about 22 minutes per day). These people had, among other things, a comparatively 29 percent lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and a 27 percent lower risk of developing it at all. But another finding may seem even more exciting to many “sports haters”: Even half the time spent exercising per day had considerable effects. For example, the risk of cardiovascular disease fell by 17 percent with 75 minutes of physical activity per week (about eleven minutes a day), and the risk of cancer fell by 7 percent.
“If you are someone who is discouraged by the idea of 150 minutes of physical activity per week, then our results should be good news for you,” says study author Dr. Soren Brage in a press release. “This is also a good starting point – if you find that 75 minutes per week is doable, you can try to gradually increase it to the full recommended amount.” In other words: some amount of exercise is always better than no amount of exercise at all.
How to integrate eleven minutes of exercise into your daily routine
“Just eleven minutes a day? I can easily fit that into my daily routine!”, you might think in an initial wave of euphoria about this wonderful news. But for those who are inexperienced, the question quickly arises: But how? The good news first: There are no limits to your creativity! For example, you could incorporate daily walks into your daily routine – perhaps you can allow yourself to ignore the car or bus one day or another and walk? Instead of using such means of transport, you could also decide to do more journeys by bike.
Remember: The study found that just eleven minutes of “moderate to intense” exercise is enough. But what is moderate and what is intense? There is a rule of thumb for this: If you can talk but not sing while exercising, it is called “moderate” intensity. It becomes intense when you can no longer hold a conversation. “Moderate exercise” is therefore equivalent to a walk.
Sources used: health.com, bjsm.bmj.com, edition.cnn.com