Boost Heart Health with 10 Minutes a Day
Getting help from exercise is easier than you think. While the general recommendation is 30 minutes a day of moderately challenging aerobic exercise, most days of the week, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May of 2007 showed that even a simple, 10 minute stroll can help.
Researchers recruited 464 overweight or obese, postmenopausal women for a six month study to determine how much exercise, at what intensity, was needed to impact heart health.
The women were assigned to four groups: one did not exercise, one group exercised for 72 minutes a week, one exercised for 136 minutes a week and one for 192 minutes a week. They used an exercise bike, pedaling at a speed that was equivalent to walking at about 2-3 miles per hour.
They found that the women who exercised about 10 minutes a day improved their peak oxygen consumption (a measure of heart and lung fitness) by 4.2 percent. Those that exercised about 20 minutes a day, improved by 6 percent and those that exercised for about 28 minutes a day improved by 8.2 percent.
Timothy Church MD, MPH, PhD, lead researcher on the study which was conducted at Louisiana State University’s Laboratory of Preventive Research says, “This is great news for couch potatoes as well as the aging. If you can’t obtain the Surgeon Generals Recommendations for exercise of 150 minutes a week, we now know that half that much will increase your fitness and get health benefits.”
