In fact, the University of Florida research showed that spending 20 minutes doing light activity, like dusting, lowered heart risk by one percent.

 

The study looked at 1,100 people ages 74 to 84, who wore accelerometers that measured how much they moved throughout the day. The researchers then correlated their activity level with their predicted risk of coronary events, including heart attack or coronary death, also known as sudden cardiac death.

 

The group’s 10-year predicted risk ranged from 4.2 to 21.6 percent, averaging around 13 percent. Overall, study participants spent about 77 percent of their waking hours engaged in sedentary behavior. The researchers found that every 20 minutes per day the participants engaged in lower-level activity was associated with a one percent decrease in cardiovascular risk.

 

The study offers hope to elderly people who want to reduce their cardiovascular risk but cannot perform the “moderate-to-vigorous” exercise that is so often recommended, said Thomas Buford, assistant professor at the UF Institute on Aging.

 

“Even among people who had very low levels of activity and spent nearly 80 percent of their time completely sedentary, the amount of time each day simply engaging in some low level of activity was associated with lower predicted risk of experiencing a major cardiovascular event,” he added.