Once a week 10 to 60 minutes of brisk walk reduces death risk from any cause

A brisk stroll 10 to 60 minutes once or twice a week reduces death risk from any cause including heart attack, stroke or cancer, according to a statistical study of nearly 90,000 people.People who walked or gardened 10 minutes to an hour each week had an 18-percent lower risk of death from any cause compared to full-on couch potatoes, researchers reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

According to latest ACC/AHA 2019 Guideline on Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, the quantum of exercise recommend is as follows -

Engaging in regular exercise – experts advise aiming for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercises such as brisk walking, swimming, dancing or cycling each week. For people who are inactive, some activity is better than none and small 10-minute bursts of activity throughout the day can add up for those with hectic schedules. Currently, only half of the American adults are getting enough exercise and prolonged periods of sitting can counteract the benefits of exercise.

People who walked or gardened 10 minutes to an hour each week had an 18-percent lower risk of death from any cause compared to full-on couch potatoes, researchers reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine

Two-and-a-half to five hours weekly of such "moderate physical activity" -- broken into segments of no less than 10 minutes -- resulted in a 31 percent reduction in risk, they found.

And those who clocked up at least 25 hours almost halved the risk.

Not everyone, however, has that much time to spend on leisure-time exercise, the authors acknowledged.

Heart-pumping and pulse-quickening activities such as biking, running and competitive sports "are more time-efficient than moderate intensity activity," they said.

For cardiovascular disease alone, there was no additional benefit to be gained by graduating from five to 25 hours, they noted.

Researchers led by Bo Xi, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Shandong University in northern China, sifted through data collected annually on 88,140 people in the United States between 1997 and 2008 for the National Health Interview Surveys.

That data on exercise was then matched against registered deaths through 2011.

The authors cautioned that the study was observational, meaning that no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect. The fact that exercise data was self-reported was also a potential weakness.

But the large number of people covered by the research goes a long way to compensate for these methodological limitations, they added.