A few relatively short bursts of intense exercise, amounting to only a few minutes a week, can deliver many of the health and fitness benefits of hours of conventional exercise, according to new research, says Dr Michael Mosley. But how much benefit you get from either may well depend on your genes. When I first read studies which suggested that I could make significant and measurable changes to my fitness by doing just three minutes of exercise a week, I was incredulous. But this apparently outrageous claim is supported by many years of research done in a number of different countries including the UK, so I decided to give it a go. Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote Aerobic fitness is a measure of how good your heart and lungs are at getting oxygen into your body and is an excellent predictor of future health” My guide into the world of High Intensity Training (HIT), was Jamie Timmons, professor of ageing biology at Birmingham University. Jamie assured me that by doing just three minutes of HIT a week for four weeks, I could expect to see significant changes in a number of important health indices. The first, and the one I was most interested in, is insulin sensitivity. Insulin removes sugar from the blood, it controls fat and when it becomes ineffective you become diabetic. My father was a diabetic and died from complications of that disease. Jamie assured me that research from a number of centres has shown that three minutes of HIT a week improves insulin sensitivity by an average of 24%. The second improvement I was likely to see would be in my aerobic fitness. Aerobic fitness is a measure of how good your heart and lungs are at getting oxygen into your body and is an excellent predictor of future health. I asked Jamie why. "The simple answer is we don't know," he replied. "What we do know is that it is a very, very powerful predictor of future health." Genetic test So if I could improve my insulin sensitivity and my aerobic fitness then that should improve my general health. But Jamie said there was a potential sting in the tail. There was a possibility that I wouldn't improve. Not because HIT doesn't work but because I've inherited the wrong genes. Continue reading the main story FIND OUT MORE Michael Mosley presents Horizon: The Truth About Exercise on BBC Two at 21:00 GMT on Tuesday 28 February 2012 or watch online via iplayer (UK only) afterwards at the above link The fact is that people respond to exercise in very different ways. In one international study 1,000 people were asked to exercise four hours a week for 20 weeks. Their aerobic fitness was measured before and after starting this regime and the results were striking. Although 15% of people made huge strides (so-called "super-responders"), 20% showed no real improvement at all ("non-responders"). There is no suggestion that the non-responders weren't exercising properly, it was simply that the exercise they were doing was not making them any aerobically fitter. Jamie and his collaborators investigated the reasons for these variations and discovered that much of the difference could be traced to a small number of genes. On the basis of this finding they have developed a genetic test to predict who is likely to be a responder, and who is not. Jamie offered me that test. But I would not be told the results until I had completed my HIT regime. I agreed, had blood taken and went through some baseline tests to assess my starting point, fitness-wise. Then I began to do HIT. Full throttle It's actually very simple. You get on an exercise bike, warm up by doing gentle cycling for a couple of minutes, then go flat out for 20 seconds. A couple of minutes to catch your breath, then another 20 seconds at full throttle. Another couple of minutes gentle cycling, then a final 20 seconds going hell for leather. And that's it.
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