A few short bursts of physical activity during everyday tasks can reduce the risk of premature death from cardiovascular disorders and other causes in people unable or unwilling to exercise, researchers said in a study released on Thursday.

The study has found that people who engaged in three to four bouts of vigorous physical activity daily, each bout lasting one to two minutes, had 48 per cent lower risk of cardiovascular death over people who had not.

They also had 38 per cent lower risk of all-cause and cancer-linked mortality.

The researchers used a UK database to analyse physical activity levels and mortality risk from the health records of over 25,200 non-exercisers and 62,300 people who exercised.

Their results suggest that short bouts of vigorous intermittent lifestyle-related physical activity by non-exercisers elicit similar effects to vigorous physical activity by exercisers.

“Many daily activities can be tweaked to raise your heart rate for a minute or so,” said Emmanuel Stamatakis, professor of physical activity and population health at the University of Sydney, Australia, who led the study.

“It could simply involve stepping up the pace while walking or doing the housework with a bit more energy,” he said.

Stamatakis and his study collaborators from academic institutions in Canada, Denmark and the UK have called for revisions in guidelines to make people aware that they could potentially experience benefits from short-lasting vigorous physical activity even in the absence of structured exercise.

The study’s findings were published on Thursday in the journal Nature Medicine.

“The findings extend the benefit of physical activity to many people who are not able to indulge in leisure time vigorous physical exercise,” said Ambuj Roy, professor of cardiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, who was not associated with the study.

But, Roy said, the short bouts of vigorous intermittent activity would need to be defined accurately and moderated so that there is no undue strain on the heart.

“It would be best to enage in activities that do not increase the heart rate more than 70 per cent of the maximum rate for age — that is 220 minus the age in years. In simpler terms, activities during which you can still talk in sentences while performing them and not where you cannot speak more than a few words before pausing for a breath,” Roy said.

Current guidelines recommend 150 to 300 minutes of moderate intensity activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous intensity activity per week.

An update in 2020 in the World Health Organisation guidelines on physical activity, co-chaired by Stamatakis, had acknowledged that “all activity counts” and removed the stipulation that activity should be accumulated in 10-minute bouts.

The new study recorded a 32-34 per cent lower cardiovascular disease mortality risk associated with an average of four minutes of the short-lasting vigorous physical activity per day.

The researchers said this is comparable with equivalent risk reduction for 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous leisure-time exercise. Most earlier studies had focused on the impact of structured exercise on lowering premature mortality risk.

The new study that relied on wearable wrist watch-like sensors to track activity is the first tolook into the long-term health effects of non-exercise vigorous activity embedded in everyday tasks such as walking or doing household errands.

The researchers said their results are “striking but plausible”.

In the past, studies have shown that very small doses of exercise-based but short-lasting vigorous physical activity can have rapid effects on cardiorespiratory fitness.

One study that examined stairclimbing had found that vigorous physical activity lasting 20 seconds to a few minutes three to four times daily can lead to substantial improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness in previously inactive adults within a few weeks.