Just minutes a day! This simple habit could slash your risk of 8 deadly diseases

The researchers carried out a detailed study of around 96,000 people, comparing their overall activity levels with the amount of vigorous activity and their subsequent risk of eight major diseases.

They found that even short bursts of more intense activity, like running for the bus, lowered the risk of disease and death overall, but it was especially protective against inflammatory diseases, including arthritis; serious cardiovascular disease, such as heart attack and stroke; and dementia.

The research was by an international team including Professor Minxue Shen from the Xiangya School of Public Health at Central South University, Hunan, China. He said: “We know that physical activity reduces the risk of chronic disease and premature death, and there is growing evidence that vigorous activity provides greater health benefits per minute than moderate activity. But questions remain about the importance of intense activity versus total physical activity. For example, if two people do the same total amount of activity, does the person who exercises more vigorously gain greater health benefits? And if someone has limited time, should they focus on exercising harder rather than longer?”

The research included 96,408 people who are part of the UK Biobank study. Each participant wore an accelerometer on their wrist for a week to accurately measure their movement, including brief bouts of vigorous movement that people often forget. Researchers used these measurements to quantify each person’s total activity across the week and the proportion of activity that was vigorous enough to make them out of breath.

They compared this data with the likelihood of dying or developing eight serious health conditions over the following seven years (major cardiovascular disease, irregular heartbeat, type 2 diabetes, immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, liver disease, chronic respiratory diseases, chronic kidney disease and dementia).

The found that people who spent a higher proportion of their total physical activity doing vigorous activity had substantially lower risks of all the diseases. For example, compared with people who did no vigorous activity at all, those with the highest proportion had a 63% lower risk of developing dementia, a 60% lower risk of type 2 diabetes and 46% lower risk of dying. These benefits of vigorous activity remained even when the amount of time was modest.

The researchers also found that a higher proportion of vigorous activity was more important in some diseases than others. For example, with inflammatory diseases like arthritis and psoriasis, intensity was almost all that mattered for reducing risk. For others, such as diabetes and chronic liver disease, both the amount of activity and the intensity mattered.

Professor Shen said: “Vigorous physical activity appears to trigger specific responses in the body that lower-intensity activity cannot fully replicate. During vigorous physical activity – the kind that makes you feel out of breath – your body responds in powerful ways. Your heart pumps more efficiently, your blood vessels become more flexible, and your body improves its ability to use oxygen.

“Vigorous activity also appears to reduce inflammation. This may help explain why we saw strong associations with inflammatory conditions such as psoriasis and arthritis. It may also stimulate chemicals in the brain that help keep brain cells healthy, which could help explain the lower risk of dementia.

“Our findings suggest that making some of your physical activity vigorous can provide substantial health benefits. This doesn't require going to the gym. Adding short bursts of activity that make you slightly breathless into daily life, like taking the stairs quickly, walking fast between errands or playing actively with children, can make a real difference. Even 15 to 20 minutes per week of this kind of effort – just a few minutes a day – was linked to meaningful health benefits.

“Current guidelines generally focus on the amount of time spent being active per week. Our findings suggest that the composition of that activity matters, and matters differently depending on which diseases you're trying to prevent. This could open the door to more personalised physical activity recommendations based on an individual's specific health risks.

“Vigorous activity may not be safe for everyone, especially older adults or people with certain medical conditions. For them, any increase in movement is still beneficial, and activity should be tailored to the individual.”