Researchers used a ground-breaking analytic method developed at Glasgow Caledonian University to discover that replacing sitting with as little as a few minutes of moderate exercise a day tangibly improves heart health.
The study, led by UCL and the University of Sydney and sponsored by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), was published in the European Heart Journal. It is the first to assess how different movement patterns throughout the 24-hour day is linked to heart health.
It is also the first evidence to emerge from the international Prospective Physical Activity, Sitting and Sleep (ProPASS) consortium. Glasgow Caledonian University’s Professor Sebastien Chastin is one of their world-leading experts.
Professor Chastin said: “This landmark study rests on a ground-breaking analytic method developed by our group at Glasgow Caledonian University.
“The novel approach was adopted by an international consortium of researchers on physical activity to analyse the largest amount of data on human physical activity ever assembled. The method showed that small changes in how you move can have a big impact on heart health.”
Cardiovascular disease, which refers to all diseases of the heart and circulation, is the number one cause of mortality globally. In 2021, it was responsible for one in three deaths, with coronary heart disease alone the single biggest killer. Since 1997, the number of people living with cardiovascular disease across the world has doubled and is projected to rise further [full stop]
In this study, researchers analysed data from six studies, encompassing 15,246 people from five countries, to see how movement behaviour across the day is associated with heart health, as measured by six common indicators.
Each participant used a wearable device on their thigh to measure their activity throughout the 24-hour day and had their heart health measured.
The researchers identified a hierarchy of behaviours that make up a typical 24-hour day, with time spent doing moderate-vigorous activity providing the most benefit to heart health, followed by light activity, standing and sleeping compared with the adverse impact of sedentary behaviour.
The team modelled what would happen if an individual changed various amounts of one behaviour for another each day for a week, in order to estimate the effect on heart health for each scenario. When replacing sedentary behaviour, as little as five minutes of moderate-vigorous activity had a noticeable effect on heart health.
Full research paper here – https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/advancearticle/doi/10.1093/eurheartj/ehad717/7343176
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