We are now doing nothing for longer and it has consequences.  

Let’s call it sedentary behaviour. 

When sedentary behaviour is practised over extended periods of time, significant health matters emerge. Such things as an increased risk of chronic conditions, poorer mental health and increased mortality – start to emerge.  

Research suggest that regular, brief bouts of activity can counteract the harmful health effects of prolonged sedentary behaviour. This logically means that if more people do simple regular physical activities, then the cost burden of ill health should be reduced. It also means if such a strategy could be introduced into the workplace, then savings could be made with the reduction in risk factors. Put simply – all would benefit by such actions.  

A large-scale research project (n=19,342) wanted to see if implementing routine activity bouts could prompt people to incorporate such exercise breaks into their lives. The project also wanted to find out if there is an optimal exercise time to gain maximum health and wellbeing benefits in real-world settings.  

The project participants (average age 47 years) took 5-minute walking breaks every 30, 60 or 120 minutes intervals across their day for a 2-week period. Individuals self-administered the project. Seventy percent (70%) were female, and the participants were supported throughout the two weeks with a Podcast from Colombia University (who were conducting the research) and 5 x SMS messages per day. 

The researchers concluded that within a real-life environment, exercise movement breaks were feasible, acceptable and appropriate across all three doses (30, 60 and 120 minutes). The positive results suggest implementation of such a system offers exciting potential to mitigate the health and wellbeing risks associated with inactivity.  

Exercise breaks were found to be effective in improving self-reported psychosocial outcomes in a dose response pattern. Reported fatigue decreased and positive affects increased significantly across all three break patterns. Irrespective of the exercise break pattern there were no adverse findings on work outcomes.  

The hourly movement breaks (5 minute every 60 minutes) offered the best balance between feasibility of implementation and effectiveness in addressing the health-related risks.  

This large-scale study also demonstrates that movement breaks have a broader public health strategy possibility. The barriers to completing a short 5-minute walk should be minimal however we remain a sedentary society. Showing that health related benefits can be obtained by moving for 5 minutes every hour showed get encourage individuals to get moving. 

Check out the other article in the Risk Report for the results of an innovative movement regime in the workplace.