100 Second Walks - The Secret Weapon for Metabolic Health and Longevity!
You might not think taking a 100-second walk every 30 minutes would impact your health, but research suggests otherwise.
In fact, this simple change could help to improve your metabolic health, prevent or assist with diabetes prevention or reversal and help you live longer as a result.
This short-bout-exercise related positive metabolic health effect was captured beautifully in a recent study (1) examining the effects of different types of activity on post-meal metabolism. The study found that those who took regular micro-movement breaks had lower plasma glucose and insulin levels than those who sat continuously or exercised for just one continuous longer bout.
So why is this?
One theory is that regular low-intensity exercise helps to increase muscle permeability and keep GLUT4 ready for transporting glucose to fuel cells. In other words, your muscles are better able to absorb excess glucose from your bloodstream when you move more frequently, even if it’s just for a short period.
Put simply, these tiny exercise breaks seem to be keeping the muscles primed, in a constant state of readiness for optimal glucose utilization.
So the key takeaway here when it comes to micro-movement breaks or very short bouts of non-intense exercise is that more frequent, shorter episodes offer significant additional benefits to doing longer continuous sessions within the 6 hours after a meal.
So next time you’re sitting at your desk, or watching TV, make sure to get up and move every 30 minutes or so. Mix and match your micro-moments to keep them, novel, interesting and motivating.
Frequently combine exercises like, short walks around the house or office (up and down a flight of stairs if possible), bodyweight squats, pushups, leg and knee raises and stretching -even short bouts of house work, like vacuuming count toward your daily and weekly movement targets (150 minutes per week), while keeping your muscles primed for efficient glucose dumping.
And of course, having larger and stronger gluts and leg muscles, by doing more intensive lower-body targeted resistance (i.e. weighted squats and deadlifts) training 2 to 4 times per week (for as little as 15 minutes per muscle-centric workout) will likely significantly enhance the positive metabolic-health effects of your micro-exercise breaks, even more!
Hope that helps! - @YourCoachDavid
Your Coach David is a former Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapist and Clinical Behavior Consultant turned Certified Stress Management & Sleep Science Coach. He's also an International Sports Science Association (ISSA) Certified Personal Fitness Trainer and Nutritionist.
Comments