14 DAY TRIAL // A report published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition recommends that office workers get up from their desk and go for a 2-minute-long walk once every half an hour.
Doing so helps significantly lower their risk of developing diabetes, specialists argue. By the looks of it, such short walks can prove more beneficial to one's health than 30-minute-long ones.
To test whether it’s best for office workers to walk for a brief amount of time every once in a while, or stroll for at least half an hour during their free time, a team of University of Otago in New Zealand scientists asked for the help of 70 volunteers.
These volunteers were first made to sit at a desk for nine hours straight.
Later, they were asked to do the same, but make sure that they stroll for half an hour before assuming position at their desks.
During the first set of experiments, the volunteers got to once again sit for nine hours in a row, except that this time they were required to get up and walk for 1 minute and 40 seconds tops once every half an hour.
While the people who agreed to take part in this study were busy sitting and/or walking, the researchers closely monitored their blood glucose and insulin levels, Daily Mail reports.
To ensure that the information gathered in this manner was accurate, the volunteers were not given the chance to bring their own snacks to “work.”
On the contrary, they were offered the same meal-replacement drink after one, four and seven hours.
At the end of the experiments, it was concluded that very short walks carried out once every half an hour had been the ones most efficient at keeping the volunteers' blood sugar levels under control.
Consequently, they had helped lower diabetes risk.
“Regular activity breaks were more effective than continuous physical activity at decreasing blood sugar and insulin levels in healthy, normal-weight adults,” the specialists write in their paper.