Andrew Huberman· PhD
there's now so much emerging data that have been coming out, you know, over the last decade on these short bursts of physical activity that add up.
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The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
there's now so much emerging data that have been coming out, you know, over the last decade on these short bursts of physical activity that add up.
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And so the question there with VILPA is in these activities of daily living that are already part of our lives, if you embed vigorous effort in those, another classic example would be, you take a five-hour flight and get off the plane, you have the choice, the escalator's there or you have the stairs. Many people are taking the escalator, but you got some heavy backpacks, you could vigorously climb up the stairs for 30 seconds to a minute, that would be a dose of VILPA right there. And so again, you gotta move from one level to the other, that's not planned and structured exercise, that's just activities of daily living. And the question that's being asked in that research is, if people choose to do that in a vigorous manner, is that meaningful? And there's some evidence for that, including a large study that was published in December that was, it mined the UK Biobank data.
you take a five-hour flight and get off the plane, you have the choice, the escalator's there or you have the stairs. Many people are taking the escalator, but you got some heavy backpacks, you could vigorously climb up the stairs for 30 seconds to a minute, that would be a dose of VILPA right there.
So I'll say this, there's been these interesting studies that are called the Vigorous Intensity Lifestyle Physical Activity, so VILPA. And there's these large studies where people have worn these accelerometers, some sort of smart Fitbit or fill-in-the-blank type of device that'll measure their movement. And it's been shown from these studies, so the Vigorous Intensity, this is basically not just walking. This is like you're going to more of a maximal heart rate or close to it, so you're more like maybe 80% estimated max heart rate. And doing something for anywhere like one minute to three minutes, three times a day. So this is like the quote-unquote exercise snacks.
what they're doing is they're taking advantage of like everyday situations to get their heart rate up. So they use the stairs and they don't just, you know, walk up it, they sprint up them. Um or they they bike to you they bike to work or go fast to work or whatever. Um briskly walk to work.
Now, maybe your parents are retired and they're not necessarily trying to get to the subway or the train or whatever. is going to be more of a structured exercise snack. And I'll let you kind of talk about some of that. But like we, you know, they can engage in jumping jacks or maybe chair squats or people that are, you know, maybe not older, they can do burpees or, you know, you know, body weightight squats or, you know, push-ups, like a combination of all these things.
When I say Vilpa again people, I'm talking about vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity. This is not something this is this isn't going to the gym and doing Pelaton. This is just your movement throughout the day. Um, being as measured by with an accelerometer. Um, the benefits were equivalent to people that were doing structured exercise, right? So there was like 62,000 people um who actually did exercise and they compared that to people who were doing Vilpa and it was crazy but the same outcomes in terms of risk reduction.