Small Steps

In this week's Rundown, short walks make a difference, more exercise means more life and alcohol ages you, biologically speaking.

The Rundown

Small Steps. A recent paper in the journal Sports Medicine suggests that walking after a meal, even for as little as two minutes, has a big impact in moderating blood sugar levels. The meta-analysis examined the results of seven studies that compared the effects of sitting versus standing or walking on subjects’ heart health.

In the seven studies, participants either stood or walked for two to five minutes every 20 to 30 minutes throughout one full day. Two of the studies included people with and without pre-diabetes or Type 2 diabetes while in the remaining five studies, no one had either illness.

The results of all seven studies showed that a few minutes of light-intensity walking after a meal improved the participants’ blood sugar levels. Standing also lowered levels but not as much as walking did. After a short walk, blood sugar levels rose and fell more slowly.

This is a significant result for people who have diabetes because avoiding spikes in blood sugar is a critical part of managing it but it’s also thought that sharp fluctuations in blood sugar can contribute to developing the disease. Walking within 60 to 90 minutes of eating, which is when blood sugar levels tend to peak, had the best results.

Double Up. According to new research published in the journal Circulation, people who perform two to four times the currently recommended amount of moderate or vigorous physical activity per week have a significantly reduced risk of mortality.

For Americans, the current guidelines recommend that adults do at least 150-300 minutes per week of moderate exercise (defined as walking, low-intensity exercise, and weightlifting) or 75-150 minutes per week of vigorous exercise (running, biking, swimming, and other aerobic activity) or a combination of both intensities.

The researchers analyzed mortality data and medical records for over 100,000 adults taken from two large studies: the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study from 1988-2018. Of the participants, 63% were female, and more than 96% were white. They had an average age of 66 and self-reported their physical activity via questionnaire every two years. They also answered questions about illnesses, family medical history and cigarette and alcohol consumption.

The analysis found that people who performed double (and up to four times more than) the currently recommended range of either moderate or intense activity each week had the lowest long-term mortality risk at 26-31% and 21-23% respectively.

Not feeling the need to double your time spent exercising? The good news is that meeting the current guidelines also has benefits. Those who met the recommendations for intense activity had an overall 19% lower risk of death from all causes while moderate exercisers meeting the guidelines had an overall 20-21% lower risk of death from all causes.

Alcohol & Aging. Oxford researchers are back with a large scale genetic analysis that offers yet more evidence on the health effects of alcohol. Their new paper suggests that high alcohol consumption (defined as about 11 glasses of wine per week) directly speeds up aging by shortening telomeres.

Telomeres are repetitive sequences of DNA that make protective caps on the tips of chromosomes. Each time a cell divides, a part of these sequences is lost. Eventually telomeres wear away and DNA starts to be effected. When this happens, the cell stops dividing, which contributes to the biological signs of aging. So, telomere length is used as a biomarker for aging.

To examine the association between telomere length and alcohol consumption, the team used data from over 245,000 people who took part in the UK Biobank project, along with a genetic technique called Mendelian Randomization (MR), which looks at variations in certain genes. In this case, the specific genes they looked at had previously been linked to alcohol consumption.

The MR analysis found that about 11 glasses of wine per week (or 32 units of alcohol) showed telomere shortening equal to around three years of aging. For people who drank 29 units (about 10 glasses of wine per week), telomere shortening was equivalent to between one and two years of aging, compared to people who drank less than six units (about two glasses of wine) per week.

Generally, the association between alcohol and telomere damage seemed to only be significant for people drinking more than 17 units per week.

Replay

This week’s vintage moment in fitness culture is brought to you by a California state of mind. It’s Muscle Beach, 1953. Photo credit: Los Angeles Examiner Negatives Collection, 1950-1961/University of Southern California Libraries.