Scott Buzby , 2025-04-22 13:08:00
April 22, 2025
3 min read
Key takeaways:
- One minute of vigorous incidental activity or 3 minutes of moderate activity may improve risk for CV events and death.
- Unstructured exercise from routine domestic activity could improve heart health for some.
Three minutes of moderate-intensity, unstructured physical activity per day could be enough to reduce risk for major cardiac events and death, researchers reported.
Incidental physical activity, including activities such as transportation, work, housework or other domestic activities, every day may improve heart health among individuals not participating in daily structured exercise, according to data published in Circulation.
“While it is widely known that regular exercise — such as running, gym workouts or fitness classes — offers substantial health benefits and helps prevent aging, chronic diseases and early mortality, fewer than one in seven Australian adults (15%) engages in regular exercise. Many never exercise at all. Commonly cited barriers include lack of time, cost, inconvenience and difficulty in planning, traveling or maintaining motivation,” Emmanuel Stamatakis, PhD, professor of physical activity, lifestyle and population health at the Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney School of Health Sciences in New South Wales, Australia, told Healio. “Incidental activity refers to the movements we perform as part of daily living — such as climbing stairs, carrying groceries, short walking sprints, housework or vigorous gardening.
“We have established the world’s first research program focused specifically on the potential of incidental physical activity for chronic disease prevention, including CVD. In this study, we wanted to explore whether — and how, at what intensity — we can achieve long-term heart health benefits through incidental physical activity, without needing to plan workouts, make time, join a gym or attend a dedicated facility,” Stamatakis said.
Incidental physical activity and heart health
Leveraging wrist-worn accelerometry data from the UK Biobank, Stamatakis and colleagues prospectively assessed the impact of light-, moderate- and vigorous-intensity incidental physical activity on major adverse CV events and death, defined as incident stroke, MI and HF.
The analysis included 24,139 individuals classified as nonexercisers without structured physical exercise who were followed up for nearly 8 years (mean age, 62 years; 56% women; 97% white).
Characteristics associated with lower levels of incidental physical activity included older age, male sex, current smoking, college education, elevated screen time, CVD medication use, cancer diagnosis and sleep duration. Higher levels of incidental physical activity were observed among those who reported drinking alcohol above guidelines and never smoking, according to the study.
“This study utilized a general population sample of 24,000 people who were free of major CVD at baseline,” Stamatakis told Healio. “However, about 17% were on antihypertensive medication, 17% were taking lipid-lowering drugs [and] 9% had a previous diagnosis of cancer.”
Compared with a physical activity expenditure of 7.73 kJ/kg1 per day1, the median observed expenditure of 24.9 kJ/kg1 per day1 was associated with lower risk for major adverse CV events (HR = 0.54; 95% CI, 0.44-0.67), CVD mortality (HR = 0.38; 95% CI, 0.26-0.58) and all-cause mortality (HR = 0.37; 95% CI, 0.3-0.44).
Activity duration of improvement in CV risk
Risk for major adverse CV events and death improved with any amounts of moderate- or vigorous-intensity incidental physical activity, which plateaued between 34 to 50 minutes per day for moderate activity and approximately 14 minutes per day for vigorous activity, according to the study.
The researchers estimated that 4.6 minutes per day of vigorous-intensity incidental physical activity (HR = 0.62; 95% CI, 0.46-0.83) and 23.8 minutes per day of moderate activity (HR = 0.5; 95% CI, 0.31-0.8) were associated with significantly lower risk for CVD mortality. The impact of light-intensity incidental physical activity on CV death only became significant at levels of more than 130 minutes per day, according to the study.
In addition, the researchers calculated that approximately 1 minute of vigorous-intensity incidental physical activity had the same impact on CV events and death compared with 2.8 to 3.4 minutes of moderate-intensity incidental activity and 34.7 to 48.5 minutes of light-intensity incidental activity.
“For people who are not keen, willing or able to do structured exercise, increasing the intensity of day-to-day activities may improve heart health in the long term. This finding mostly applies to people without major heart disease,” Stamatakis told Healio. “Be physically active as many times as possible across the day, even if each activity burst lasts 30 seconds to 3 minutes only. Aim for five, six, seven, 10 of these, provided that it is regular, almost every day. Aim for moderate or vigorous intensity when possible, ie, the type of activity that when sustained for over 30 to 40 seconds will start to increase the heart rate and get most people slightly out of breath after a minute or 2 minutes. If you have a previous diagnosis of CVD or have any symptoms, always consult your physician prior to making any significant changes to physical activity routine.”
For more information:
Emmanuel Stamatakis, PhD, can be reached at emmanuel.stamatakis@sydney.edu.au.
Sources/Disclosures
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Disclosures:
Stamatakis reports being a paid consultant for and holding equity in Complement 1, a company related to physical activity. All other authors report no relevant financial disclosures.
