Vigorous exercise has a substantial link to a reduced risk of developing eight different conditions or groups of conditions, including type 2 diabetes, immune-mediated inflammatory disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, and atrial fibrillation, according to a large international study in the European Heart Journal.
Doctors and researchers have said for decades that getting up and moving is linked to better heart health outcomes, but the research published last week by a multinational team suggests this need not mean spending hours panting in the gym every week, reports TIME Magazine.
Studies drawing on data from people wearing activity monitors on their wrists suggest that even very small amounts of light exercise, like walking, have a noticeable health benefit – and that just a few minutes of vigorous exercise a week seems to improve more than just the heart and lungs.
This latest study looked at links between vigorous exercise and the risk of developing eight different conditions or groups of conditions, including type 2 diabetes, immune-mediated inflammatory disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, and atrial fibrillation.
Although these types of studies can’t prove causation, the researchers found that vigorous exercise has a substantial link to a reduced risk of developing all these conditions, suggesting that a bit of sweating can do more good than you know.
Exercise might affect multiple risk factors
Previous research has found links between vigorous activity and a reduced risk of cardiovascular problems and mortality, says Emmanuel Stamatakis, a Professor at Monash University in Australia and one of the authors of the new paper. “This study goes further and covers a broader range of non-communicable diseases, including dementia and metabolic conditions like liver and chronic kidney disease.”
The team used data on nearly 100 000 people from the UK Biobank, which contains information on health outcomes and, for this subset of participants, information from activity trackers worn for a week. They also used information from questionnaires filled out by a larger number of participants about their physical activity.
They found that people who had more than 4% of their physical activity classified as vigorous – meaning that they would have been breathless enough to have a hard time talking – had dramatically reduced risk of all the diseases examined.
Their risks were from 29%-61% lower, depending on the disease, than people who never reached that level of exertion.
Each disease was a bit different. Lowered risk of immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, a category that includes Crohn’s disease, was strongly linked to vigorous exercise. Type 2 diabetes risk, on the other hand, was linked to both the overall volume of time spent in all levels of exertion and the amount spent in vigorous exercise.
“It's one of the conditions where you see that the volume matters,” says Stamatakis, “rather than just the intensity.”
How much exercise is enough?
In the US, current recommendations suggest 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity each week, or 150 minutes of moderate activity. But even very small amounts of high-intensity activity can have a surprisingly large health effect, this research group and others have found.
As little as four to five minutes a day of vigorous activity are linked to substantial changes, says Stamatakis. “Four and a half minutes are associated with approximately 35% to 50% lower risk for incident cardiovascular disease,” he says.
How can you tell if exercise counts as “vigorous?”
“If you can speak comfortably, that means that you are still in the moderate zone,” he says. “When you enter the vigorous zone, you will get out of breath.”
Vigorous exercise is often fairly uncomfortable, and most people who don’t exercise often are unlikely to be able to sustain it for more than a minute or two at a time.
“But 60 seconds is absolutely fine,” Stamatakis add. “We have a lot of research now showing that accruing activity from such short bursts is beneficial.”
Study details
Volume vs intensity of physical activity and risk of cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular chronic diseases
Jiehua Wei, Minxue Shen, Emmanuel Stamatakis et al.
Published in European Heart Journal on 29 March 2026
Abstract
Background and aims
While vigorous physical activity (VPA) is known to provide greater health benefits per unit time than moderate activity, the spectrum of these benefits across different chronic diseases and the relative importance of physical activity (PA) intensity vs volume remain unclear. This study examined associations between the proportion of VPA (%VPA) relative to total volume of PA and the incidence of multiple chronic disease outcomes.
Methods
This prospective population-based cohort study included 96,408 participants (mean age 61.9 years, women: 56.3%) with device-measured data (wrist-worn accelerometers) and 375,730 participants (mean age 56.2 years, women: 52.2%) with self-reported PA data (IPAQ) from the UK Biobank. Main outcomes included incidence of eight chronic diseases: major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), atrial fibrillation (AFib), type 2 diabetes (T2D), immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), chronic respiratory diseases (CRD), chronic kidney disease (CKD), and dementia, as well as all-cause mortality. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate adjusted hazard ratios and 95% confidence interval.
Results
In the device-measured data, non-linear inverse dose–response relationships were observed between %VPA and all outcomes (all P < .001), and these patterns remained consistent across strata of total PA volume. In multivariable models adjusted for total PA volume, participants with >4% VPA had 29%–61% lower risks of these outcomes compared with those with 0% VPA. Joint analyses and population attributable fraction revealed distinct disease-specific patterns: immune-mediated inflammatory diseases showed very strong intensity-dependence with minimal contribution from PA volume (20.3% for intensity vs 1.0% for volume), while MACE (17.8% vs 6.0%), AFib (16.2% vs 5.0%), CRD (21.4% vs 5.6%), and dementia (32.3% vs 8.1%) demonstrated intensity predominance with modest contribution from PA volume, and T2D (26.6% vs 17.7%), MASLD (22.1% vs 16.6%), CKD (23.0% vs 15.3%), and all-cause mortality (31.4% vs 14.2%) showed more balanced contributions from both intensity and volume.
Conclusions
A higher %VPA, independent of total activity volume, is inversely associated with eight major chronic diseases and all-cause mortality. Intensity consistently demonstrated a higher preventive potential than total PA volume. These findings support, whenever possible, prioritizing higher-intensity activities in clinical and public health interventions aimed at preventing non-communicable diseases.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
What science says we’ve been getting wrong about exercise
Short exercise bursts can trigger anti-cancer signals – UK study
Women need less exercise than men for heart benefits – Chinese study