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560-610 minutes of exercise a week needed for substantial heart benefits

bmjgroup.com

71–80 of 107 posts

Re: 560-610 minutes of exercise a week needed for substantial heart benefits

#71
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think those count as "moderate to vigorous" exercise, at least for most of the time you're doing any of them.

The study specifically includes walking in their list of exercises. You probably do want a mix of exercises -- 90 minutes of vigorous exercise a week is a standard recommendation, but 10h a week of vigorous exercise is probably contraindicated for the average 57 year old in the study. Walking is good exercise for anybody who is out of shape.

Walking as moderate exercise is not "just walking" though. You need sustained speed

Re: 560-610 minutes of exercise a week needed for substantial heart benefits

#72
post #19

I'm not convinced. I may be misunderstanding how the study was conducted, but it sounds like a more reasonable conclusion to draw from the study is that those who tend to have better health outcomes and longer healthspans/lifespans are the ones who also are willing to prioritize their health and physical fitness and are willing to spend this much time on exercise. The average age of participants in the study was 57,…

Confounders are included and therefore controlled for, and causality can be assumed since the DV is an event/hazard. This is also the reason you end up with the seemingly high average...

Re: 560-610 minutes of exercise a week needed for substantial heart benefits

#73
post #5

At this rate you get more lifespan not exercising. 10h a week out of your waking time is about 9%. No way your heart health gonna give you that much.

So do an exercise that you actually enjoy and want to be doing.

I play pickleball 10h a week and absolutely love the time spent playing. So there is no wasted time here. I spend all my exercise time doing something fun that I love doing, and it improves my health outcomes at the same time.

Re: 560-610 minutes of exercise a week needed for substantial heart benefits

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to live in a very walkable part of Victoria BC, which was great! Unfortunately I was eventually priced out, and the job market there was very competitive so I had to move I wound up in a fairly walkable part of Calgary. But Calgary is not a super walkable or bikeable city. Transit here is at best ok, and winter gets very cold. There are some good bike paths but you have to be pretty determined to use them when…

Calgary could be much better, but the river pathway is really good. It doesn't snow that much and it is rarely -40 (as in pretty much never unless you go in for wind chill). They do a very good job of clearing snow from the core pathways; way better than they do the roads! I think the biggest challenges are that it's likely the non-car options are all managed by car driving bureaucrats. Things like commuter pathways…

> It doesn't snow that much

I'm from Vancouver Island originally so Calgary snows a ton in comparison. :)

You're right it could be worse. It could be better too. That basically describes everywhere though! Overall I do love living here

> if we made city managers walk, roll or bus to work for a month it would help IMO.

Agreed. I think public servants should be encouraged (maybe required?) to dogfood public services now and then

Re: 560-610 minutes of exercise a week needed for substantial heart benefits

#76

> Those adults who met the 150 minute a week guideline on exercise experienced a modest 8-9% reduction in cardiovascular risk, the study found. This was consistent across all levels of fitness. > In order to achieve substantial protection, classed as a greater than 30% risk reduction, between 560 and 610 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a week was needed. So 30 minutes a day is still good, but more is better.…

9 hours of moderate to vigorous seems like a lot. When I do vigorous (2 times a week HIIT) I cannot do vigorous the next day, my body clearly needs recovery. I can do moderate. But I wonder what scientists mean by vigorous at this point. I am starting to suspect I set the bar too high

I think the definition of vigorous is roughly 75% of max heart rate. HIIT would generally be more strenuous than that. Roughly speaking for a lot of people, running faster than about a 10:00/mi pace is probably vigorous.

In the WHO recommendations, they say to get 75 minutes of vigorous or 150 of moderate per week. I believe in this study they use the same double counting of vigorous minutes.

I’ve seen other studies that say you get most all of the cardio benefit you can with about 150m vigorous/300m moderate. You could roughly get that by running about 2.5 miles per day.

Re: 560-610 minutes of exercise a week needed for substantial heart benefits

#77
post #6

That's like 90 minutes of exercise a day if you take zero rest days... Not happening for most people. I think even marathon training requires less than 90 minutes a day on average.

Moderate is not vigorous. They mean being active and walking, etc.

The imprecise language in these studies often means people can interpret them in whatever way they want.

This study defines moderate as "brisk" walking, suggesting that it's not just walking.

Athletes live in their own bubble where "vigorous" means "maximal".

Re: 560-610 minutes of exercise a week needed for substantial heart benefits

#78
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urban design can help, but only for those who actually want to take the 'hard' route. Most people I know would rather take a subway or call an uber for anything above 20 minutes of walking (which makes me sad).

The trick is to make the healthy option the easy route. That's what Paris did (creating more bike lanes, getting rid of parking spots, closing roads to cars) and cycling is now more popular than driving [1]. [1]: See, for example, https://bicyclenetwork.com.au/newsroom/2026/03/11/how-paris-...

Indeed after the pandemic many more bike, for what I've seen a considerable percentage e-bikes, maybe understandably given the hills and distances in Paris, but imho not the everyday cardio exercise one needs.

Re: 560-610 minutes of exercise a week needed for substantial heart benefits

#80
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The human body evolved for that, and much more This is questionable past the median age that humans had on evolutionary scale.

Not questionable at all, we're made to stand up and walk/run, quite literally. We certainly did not evolve to sit 10+ hours a day https://www.ucdavis.edu/blog/humans-are-born-run https://www.kpax.com/news/a-wilder-view/a-wilder-view-why-hu...

None of these address the age bit.
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