Nearly half of the US adult population doesn’t get enough exercise.
Experts recommend 75 to 150 minutes of physical activity each week due to clear, long-held benefits for living longer – slashing obesity and the risk of chronic diseases.
However, fitting exercise into a busy work and home life can feel nearly impossible, and spending hours at the gym can put stress on the body.
But researchers have identified a three-minute workout that may promote longevity by protecting against disease and boosting weight loss more than 90 minutes of moderate exercise like cycling or swimming.
In their new study, researchers found that just three minutes of sprinting can trigger molecular changes in the body, increasing helpful proteins in the blood that are linked can lift strain on the heart and bust fat.
Researchers in New York City ran an eight-week study comparing participants who did three to four weekly sprint-cycling sessions, lasting three minutes, with those who cycled for 90 minutes.
The short sprints immediately triggered a surge in more than 200 proteins called exerkines that have been linked to blood vessel growth, tissue repair and fat-busting hormonal signaling.
By comparison, only a fraction of proteins showed noticeable changes after 90 minutes of moderate cycling, with only some beneficial proteins appearing three hours later.
A recent study found that just three minutes of sprinting can trigger molecular changes in the body, increasing helpful proteins into the blood that are linked to heart health and protection against obesity and diabetes
Although the study used cycling sprints, researchers note similar bursts can be done with running, stair climbing or bodyweight exercises such as burpees.
It’s thought that brief, vigorous exercise spikes heart rate quickly, which helps blood pump more forcefully and move oxygen to working muscles. This can help burn calories faster and train the body to handle stress better and recover easier, preventing injury.
Long, moderate workouts, however, put increased wear and tear on the body, draining energy reserves and resulting in fatigue, inflammation and damage to tissues.
‘What’s exciting here is that just a few minutes of intense exercise can trigger a significant molecular response,’ Paul Cohen, lead study author and head of the Weslie R and William H Janeway Laboratory of Molecular Metabolism at Rockefeller University in New York City, said.
‘And we still see it after eight weeks of training, which tells us this response isn’t simply a product of the body struggling to keep up with unfamiliar stress. It may be that the responses we observed are intrinsic to intense exercise.’
The study, published in Cell Reports Medicine, involved 19 participants split into two groups.
Ten participants completed six 30-second all-out cycling sprints, each followed by four minutes of recovery, while the other nine did 90 minutes of continuous moderate-intensity cycling.
Researchers then analyzed blood samples from both groups to see how exercise affected their proteins immediately after a workout.
They detected 2,884 proteins in the blood. These proteins act like tiny messengers, carrying signals around the body that can influence everything from blood vessels and muscles to hormones and metabolism.
Immediately after the sprint bouts, nearly 25 percent of the proteins had changed, many linked to lower risks of obesity, type 2 diabetes and slower biological aging. Of 33 proteins associated with lower disease risk, 32 were altered by sprinting.
By comparison, 90 minutes of moderate cycling changed fewer than 0.25 percent of the proteins right after exercise.
Some proteins linked to lower metabolic disease risk appeared later, but it took about three hours. Of the 33 proteins associated with lower risk, only three were altered after moderate exercise.
The findings do not mean moderate exercise was ineffective. Instead, its effects appeared to unfold more slowly
Researchers say the rapid changes may be driven in part by ectodomain shedding, a process in which cells release pieces of proteins into the bloodstream, allowing them to quickly send signals around the body.
Sprinting also appeared to send a stronger, faster signal to fat cells through the bloodstream.
Exercise is already known to send signals from working muscles to other parts of the body. But when researchers exposed human fat cells to blood taken after sprinting, the cells showed major changes in how they processed fuel and responded to hormones.
The findings could help explain how intense exercise affects fat metabolism.
Blood taken after moderate cycling caused much smaller changes in the fat cells.
The findings could help explain how intense exercise affects metabolism and how the body uses and stores energy. While the study did not measure weight loss, these changes could potentially play a role in the metabolic benefits of exercise linked to a longer lifespan.
Since this study was limited to 19 subjects, researchers then compared the proteins that changed after exercise with health data from more than 53,000 people in a UK health research database.
Many of these proteins were associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. More than 25 percent were associated with slow biological aging.
But the findings do not mean moderate exercise was ineffective. Instead, its effects appeared to unfold more slowly.
Researchers cautioned that more work is needed to understand how these molecular changes translate into long-term benefits. The study analyzed the body’s short-term response to different types of exercise, meaning it cannot prove that the proteins released after sprinting directly prevent obesity, diabetes or other diseases.
‘It’s well appreciated that different intensities of exercise stimulate distinct body-wide adaptations,’ Luke Olsen, study author and postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University, said. ‘However, the molecular mechanisms linking these intensity-dependent adaptations have remained largely elusive.
‘Our work suggests that exerkines – proteins and metabolites released into the bloodstream following exercise – are highly sensitive to exercise intensity and may be the key mediators of the health-promoting effects of short bursts of vigorous exercise.’
