Daily Chores May Provide Cardiovascular Protection in Women Who Don’t Exercise

Short, intense bouts of physical activity during daily life were associated with a lower risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) in non-exercising women, according to an observational study.

A median 3.4 minutes of vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity (VILPA) — usually related to occupation, housework, or transportation — per day was linked to significant reductions in MACE (HR 0.55, 95% CI 0.41-0.75) and heart failure (HR 0.33, 95% CI 0.18-0.59) in women self-reporting no regular structured exercise.

A minimum 1.2 to 1.6 minutes of VILPA per day was needed for associations with reduced MACE (HR 0.70, 95% CI 0.58-0.86), myocardial infarction (HR 0.67, 95% CI 0.50-0.91), and heart failure (HR 0.60, 95% CI 0.45-0.81), reported Emmanuel Stamatakis, PhD, MSc, of the University of Sydney, and colleagues.

“VILPA may be a promising physical activity target for cardiovascular disease prevention, particularly in women unable or not willing to engage in formal exercise,” they concluded in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

“Making short bursts of vigorous physical activity a lifestyle habit could be a promising option for women who are not keen on structured exercise or are unable to do it for any reason. As a starting point, it could be as simple as incorporating, throughout the day, a few minutes of activities like stair climbing, carrying shopping, uphill walking, [or] playing tag with a child or pet,” said Stamatakis in a press release.

“VILPA should not be seen as a quick fix — there are no magic bullets for health. But our results show that even a little bit higher-intensity activity can help and might be just the thing to help people develop a regular physical activity — or even exercise — habit,” he added.

Meanwhile, Stamatakis and his collaborators found no significant association between VILPA and MACE in men. They were unable to find an explanation for this sex difference, given the underrepresentation of women in high-intensity interval training studies and other outside reports.

“Our results support sex-specific physical activity guidelines for [cardiovascular disease] prevention,” they wrote. “Current clinical and public health guidelines assume similar cardiovascular responses to physical activity between sexes and offer no guidance on what quantity of incidental (non-exercise) activity has benefit.”

This observational study included 13,018 women and 9,350 men (mean age 61.9 years) from the U.K. Biobank prospective cohort of individuals enrolled from 2006 to 2010. Participants were eligible if they wore a wrist accelerometer for 7 days and had at least 3 valid monitoring days, including at least 1 weekend day.

Separate analyses were conducted in non-exercisers (people self-reporting no leisure time exercise and no more than one recreational walk per week) and in exercisers (those with structured exercise routines, e.g., going to the gym or playing a sport). Average daily VILPA ranged from 0 to 17 minutes in non-exercisers, and average daily vigorous physical activity (VPA) ranged from 0 to 45 minutes in exercisers.

Among exercisers, there were no major sex differences in the dose-response associations between VPA and overall MACE, myocardial infarction, or heart failure. However, there was evidence of a male-only dose-response association between exercise and stroke.

Stamatakis and team cautioned that they had no formal validation on the leisure time questionnaire used to separate exercisers from non-exercisers in the study. Furthermore, the possibility of reverse causation and residual confounding cannot be excluded in their report.

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