30 Minutes of Exercise a Day: A Health Expert Shares His Tips
Yogist Well At Work® recently spoke with Jean-Pierre Houppe, a medical expert on sedentary lifestyles and sports. He specializes in interventional cardiology (related to arteries); Jean-Pierre Houppe has always been interested in non-pharmacological prevention—that is, approaches involving a healthy diet, stress reduction, and physical activity. We invited him to our webinar to discuss the 2024 National Cause: Move 30 Minutes a Day. We discussed sedentary lifestyles and what “Move 30 Minutes a Day” actually means. Why not 40 or 60 minutes, and, most importantly, how to stay active when you have a sedentary job.
Jean-Pierre Houppe
Before defining what we mean by physical activity, let’s take a look at a 2021 study from the United States that focused on people over the age of 50. Not smoking, eating a balanced diet, and engaging in regular physical activity can add 15 healthy years to your life.
To what extent is physical activity good for your health?
Jean-Pierre Houppe
It’s not so much that physical activity is good for your health, but rather that inactivity is bad. If you have €1,000 in savings and make wise investments, you keep the €1,000 and earn an additional 20%, for example. If you do nothing, the capital you started with will gradually decrease as you spend it on daily expenses. In the same way, physical inactivity gradually erodes your health capital if you don’t maintain it.
Human beings have two essential characteristics: social interaction and physical movement. Genetically speaking, our bodies cannot function properly if we don’t move. We’re referring here to the Paleolithic era, when our ancestors ran all day long. Today, we are still hunter-gatherers. So if we don’t move, we lose our overall health. And this results in:
- cardiovascular diseases
- cancer
- inflammatory diseases
- diabetes
- high blood pressure
- etc.
What is the difference between physical inactivity and a sedentary lifestyle?
Jean-Pierre Houppe
Until about 10 to 15 years ago, doctors did not distinguish between physical inactivity and a sedentary lifestyle. Fortunately, that has changed. Let’s compare the different terms:
- Moving your arms = physical activity
- Physical exercise involves planning: riding a bike, going for a walk, etc.
- Sports involve not only training but also competition.
The 2024 National Campaign focuses on sports, but you can actually be very active without being an athlete.
Regarding physical activity and a sedentary lifestyle: moving your arms counts as physical activity, but if you sit all day, you are still considered sedentary. Physical inactivity and a sedentary lifestyle are two separate factors. As soon as you spend more than 7 hours a day sitting still (excluding sleep), you are considered sedentary. A chair is like a drug. Just look at the subway during off-peak hours—people will do anything to find a seat.
“Sitting is the new smoking.”
Why should we exercise for 30 minutes a day, as the government recommends?
Jean-Pierre Houppe
Because a sedentary lifestyle has become an absolute emergency—perhaps even more so than climate change. The Olympic Games are merely a pretext to get the French moving, because a sedentary lifestyle is a veritable societal tsunami. The tragedy is that we have the genetic potential of hunter-gatherers—who were active for a long time and programmed to walk 40 to 50 kilometers a day. Recently, we have gradually lost our physical abilities.
About 7,000 years ago, hunters—who were likely barefoot—ran faster than Usain Bolt does today over 500 meters; Roman armies marched 50 km a day carrying 30 to 40 kg of gear. Today, no army is capable of marching that far every day. A sedentary lifestyle truly took hold with the end of World War II and has intensified in recent years.
Today’s teenagers have lost 25% of their physical fitness over the past 30 years. While the recommended amount of physical activity for children and teenagers is one hour per day, only 30% of girls and 20% of boys actually meet this goal.
Are screens and connectivity the cause of a sedentary lifestyle?
Jean-Pierre Houppe
During screen time, we don’t necessarily engage in social interaction or physical activity—the very things that define us as human beings. It’s clear that a 3-year-old in a stroller with a smartphone right in front of their eyes won’t develop neurologically in a healthy way.
When we move, new neural connections form in the brain. You can see this when you encounter a problem at work. Instead of sitting in front of the computer, if you go for a one-hour walk, you’ll find that the solution comes to you after 30 to 45 minutes. Physical activity stimulates neurogenesis, not to mention its stress-relieving and anxiety-reducing effects. All the great researchers walked a lot!
How can you get 30 minutes of exercise a day if you have a sedentary job?
Jean-Pierre Houppe
The recommendation of 30 minutes a day is based on the WHO’s weekly recommendation : 150 minutes a week. Except that if you sit in your chair for five days and then suddenly go for a 2.5-hour mountain bike ride on Sunday, it doesn’t work. It’s like brushing your teeth once a week for 30 minutes to make up for the rest of the week. So you have to spread out your physical activity because you can’t store it, just like sleep.
"Good to know: the benefits of physical activity last for 30 to 36 hours."
You should combat a sedentary lifestyle every day. If a webinar lasts an hour and a half, you should get up halfway through and walk around for two minutes.
Tips for getting 30 minutes of exercise a day
- The 30 minutes don’t have to be all at once. For example, if you park 10 minutes away from work every day or get off at the previous subway or bus stop, you’ll gain 10 minutes of physical activity during the day. That leaves 10 minutes to use during your lunch break, for example, during a post-lunch walk.
- Physical activity is recommended at any age; there is no upper age limit. Just one piece of advice: start slowly. Regardless of a person’s physical condition, the recommended level of physical activity is just as beneficial. For example, a study on breast cancer involving two experimental groups showed that recurrence rates increased by 40 to 50% in the group that did not engage in physical activity. Similarly, the recurrence of colon cancer can increase by 60% if a person is inactive. Please note that you don’t have to play sports to improve your health.
- If you don't have time during the day to fit in 30 minutes of physical activity, Yogist has developed breaks that you can incorporate throughout your workday—without changing clothes and while staying at your desk
