New study claims 30 minutes of exercise a day isn’t actually enough
For years, the American Heart Association (AHA) has claimed that 30 minutes of exercise a day is enough to lower your risk of heart disease. But new reports suggest this may not be enough.
Earlier this week, Circulation, a journal put out by the AHA, published a paper that looked at 12 studies profiling more than 370,000 men and women across America. Tracking data over a 15-year span, they discovered that there were more than 20,000 instances of heart attack. Because the study profiled people with varying levels of physical activity, they were able to pinpoint that those who stuck to the recommended 30-minute per day model experienced very modest heart risk reduction compared to those who exercised for an hour or more each day. The latter had “a substantial risk reduction" of up to 35 per cent suggesting that the daily recommendation by the AHA may need to be upped.
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“Heart failure is a big public health concern and in contrast to the dramatic reduction in coronary disease that we’ve seen in the population, the incidence of heart failure remains relatively unchanged,” Jarett D. Berry, senior author of the study and an associate professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical School told The Washington Post.
Berry further claims that the study is proof that “physicians and health policymakers should consider making stronger recommendations for greater amounts of physical activity to prevent heart failure.”
But here’s where things get confusing.
Back in March, Circulation released a different study, which found that too much exercise could actually be bad for your health. The study revealed that “exercising strenuously four to seven days a week conferred an increased risk of vascular disease, compared with two to three days a week of strenuous exercise,” reported the Wall Street Journal. Unlike the more recent study, this paper focused on the types of exercise with “strenuous” defined as, “enough to cause sweating or a fast heart rate.”
For exercises considered strenuous, the study found that “the optimal frequency of activity in terms of vascular risk reduction was 2 to 3 times per week which was associated with significant relative risk reductions of 17% to 19%.” However, it warned that “any further increase in the frequency of strenuous exercise beyond that point was associated with an increased vascular risk.” For non-strenuous exercises, including walking, gardening, and housework, the recommended frequency jumped up to four to six times a week.
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So where does that leave us in terms of an exercise threshold?
Apparently, we still don’t know. “For every paper showing that there’s evidence of an uptick (in disease) at the extremes of exercise, I can show you another one that says there isn’t,” Michael J. Joyner, a physician at the Mayo Clinic told the WSJ. Though the March study suggested that the recommended frequency of exercise is like a horseshoe, where exactly it plateaus for each individual is something science has yet to determine.
