Most people understand that there are few things more important for your health than exercise. Less well understood is that the most important thing of all is not to exercise vigorously several days/week, but rather to merely move during the day. If you can accomplish that, it will have tremendous impacts on your health. In this paper, researchers from University College London expertly quantified this effect using data from wearable fitness trackers, and found that “brief bursts of vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity (VILPA) that is embedded into everyday life” have a profound effect on preventing mortality from cardiovascular disease and cancer. And these bursts of activity only need to total of a few minutes/day to achieve the effect. What are the molecular mechanisms responsible for this effect, and could we capture the effect in the form of a pill?
