This is an episode we think you might like of Body Electric. TED Radio Hour host Manoush Zomorodi digs into the preliminary results of the listener study with Columbia University researcher Keith Diaz. He shares the surprising — and encouraging — initial findings from more than 20,000 listeners who tried to incorporate movement breaks into their day.
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[00:00:23] we've got you. Listen now to the shortwave podcast from NPR. Hey there, it's Manoush Zomorodi, host of the TED Radio Hour. So a few months ago, NPR and I announced a special six-part podcast series called Body Electric. And as part of our investigation into how our bodies are
[00:00:46] adapting to our technology, we asked listeners to join a study with Columbia University Medical Center. Over 20,000 people signed up to try integrating five-minute gentle movement breaks into every half hour, every hour, or every two hours of sitting time. And for the folks who
[00:01:07] managed to stick with it, the results were pretty astounding. As you are about to hear in my conversation with head researcher Keith Diaz, I really think it's going to motivate you to think
[00:01:19] about how you live with your screens. So if you want to try it yourself, you're in luck because we just launched the Body Electric Challenge. We have taken these findings, added more reporting,
[00:01:31] and put together a quick startup guide. So listen and then go to npr.org slash body electric. Okay, so what you are about to hear is my conversation with the head researcher of our study with Columbia University Medical Center, Keith Diaz. This conversation happened in November
[00:01:53] 2023, one week after our study had closed. And just to set the scene, it was a big moment after months of planning, weeks of data collection, and some long days making sense of all the information listeners had sent him. Keith finally had some preliminary findings to share. I've been
[00:02:15] cunching the numbers for days. Yeah, so before we start, we closed our study last week. And what have you been looking at since? Yeah, so we had people for two weeks, we just asked them to
[00:02:31] to try out movement breaks in their everyday lives. And we gave them the option which how often they could move around. So you could say every half hour I'm going to do it, every hour I'm going to do it,
[00:02:41] or every two hours I'll do it. And we gave people the option of the freedom to choose which one they want to try. And for two weeks, they went out and did it. I'm feeling actually really, really anxious
[00:02:51] and excited to hear what you found. But I feel like we need to keep a few things in mind as you share your findings. Yeah, absolutely. I think that the biggest caveat to this is these are preliminary
[00:03:05] data. This is just an early first look. And maybe the bigger thing is also to say this is not peer-reviewed yet. And so the scientific process, anytime you go to publish a paper and put it out
[00:03:18] into the world, you have to get it reviewed by other experts in the field. And so this is non-peer-reviewed research at this point. Okay, very good. So enough preamble. Bring it, Keith. What'd you find?
[00:03:34] Well, maybe the first question we'll start with is did it work? The take-home here is everybody improved. Everybody saw improvements in their fatigue levels, in their positive emotions, and they saw decreases in their negative emotions. But what we found was something we call a dose-response
[00:03:55] relationship. And what that means is that the group that took the most breaks every half hour had the greatest response. Oh my gosh, really? Yeah. So for fatigue levels, folks who moved every half hour improved their fatigue levels by about 30 percent. The group that moved every hour
[00:04:17] improved their fatigue levels by about 25 percent. And the group that moved every two hours improved their fatigue levels by about 20 percent. Uh-huh. Right? So everybody improved, but the group that moved the most had the greatest improvements. Yeah, that's amazing. Now one of the big questions
[00:04:34] we had when we began this was compliance. Who would stick to actually taking the breaks? Yeah, yeah, right. That was the big question of can we actually get people to do this? We got a lot of people drop out. How many? Like what percentage would you say?
[00:04:50] Um, you know, 40 percent? I mean, we were asking a lot of people who did sign up. So like, you know, 40 percent, that's actually, that means 60 percent did do it, like, which is crazy. Yes, we got
[00:05:01] people to do it. They did it, and I was really surprised how much people actually liked it. So we asked a bunch of questions about what we'll call acceptability, but it's just essentially, did you
[00:05:12] like it? Did you want to keep doing it? And so we found that it didn't matter what dose you had, whether you moved every half hour or every two hours, about 82 to 83 percent liked doing this
[00:05:25] intervention, these movement breaks. And so people liked it, which was great, but the flip side is then we asked people, well, how hard was it? Is it feasible? Is it doable? And only about
[00:05:38] half of the people who took movement breaks every half hour said it was doable. Wow. 70 percent said it was doable every hour, and then 80 percent said it was doable every two hours. And when we looked
[00:05:48] at the numbers and we asked people to report how often did they take movement breaks, the group that moved every half hour, they took on average eight breaks a day. That's not even close to how much
[00:05:58] you're supposed to be doing in an eight-hour day. Let's say it's an eight-hour workday, you should have taken 16 breaks. And so yes, we got people to do it. No, could they do it at the
[00:06:09] level that they were supposed to do it? But let me turn this back around and say we saw amazing effects. We have a little montage of listeners, and I wonder if now is a good time to play that
[00:06:20] for you as we get to dig down deeper into some of the responses that you got. Yeah, let's go for it. Hi, I'm Bridget Collins and I'm a software engineer. It's good to walk. It's good to
[00:06:34] be outside. It's good to be looking around. I have taken some of the breaks on my desk, marching and dancing and doing as much movement as I can. I am a remote worker living in Vermont.
[00:06:48] My newest exercise is doing 15 minutes of soccer drills outside. I facilitate a training session for three hours. Before the training session starts, I tell the participants we're going to
[00:07:02] take a break every half hour and they get really excited. I work in a museum, but I am in management, so I am mostly at my computer in the back offices. To take my break, I got up and walked around the
[00:07:15] museum, and it was fantastic to be out on the floor. My energy went way up, so when you get home from work, you typically just want to, you don't feel like cooking dinner, you don't feel like doing
[00:07:29] anything. I didn't really get any of that while I was doing the study. I'm a stay-at-home mom while my kids are still sleeping. I've started implementing five-minute bike rides every 25 minutes. I quit my desk job. Listening to the podcast just articulated everything I was feeling
[00:07:50] so perfectly and really helped me hand in my resignation. There's so much to unpack there, and we heard from so many people just how life-changing this was for them.
[00:08:08] And so that for me stood out as if we're going to actually get people to do this for long term, that we're going to have to help develop habit. The aspiration here is to make it like brushing
[00:08:20] teeth, and how do we get to that level of building that habit where it's automatic and that I don't need a reminder to do it? And we saw people during the study try to cue themselves
[00:08:33] too. So some of the cues that they used were, when I finish a work meeting or whenever I finish like a task, I take a walking break. And so instead of needing a reminder, they were trying to
[00:08:45] naturally build it into their work habit and routine. Especially if they see it as a reward because they start to see that they actually feel good when they do it, that it's not something they
[00:08:55] have to do but that they want to do. Yeah. And that was when we looked at the other facilitators that people most often said was helpful, listening to their body cues. So I think honing in and
[00:09:11] harnessing this notion or idea that I feel better, my mood is better, my feed level is down, I think is really what's going to help us get people to change their behaviors, not telling them that
[00:09:20] their blood pressure is going to change or their glucose levels are going to change, you know, a couple of weeks, a couple of months, a couple of years. I had a lot of people reach out to me
[00:09:29] and be like, even if they weren't filling out the survey, this was like a little worm in their brain that kept being like, are you moving? How do you feel now? What about now? Did you move? Like it
[00:09:40] was something that kept popping back up that just nudged them in a loving way. No, undoubtedly I think we got into some people's heads for the good and have changed their mindsets. And we heard from
[00:09:58] people who were just like, they're going to keep this going. I did get people asking me, why don't you and Keith partner up with Fitbit or Apple Watch or whatever else is out there?
[00:10:15] And I said, well, if only it were that simple. Yeah, you know, Fitbit and Apple are largely in the business of making money. And so their interests lie in doing something that's going to benefit
[00:10:28] them. And, you know, sometimes that doesn't align well with science and the things that we want to accomplish and do. Yeah. So tell folks what should they look out for next from you? Because there are
[00:10:44] going to be some people who are like, I'm in. I'm in now, Keith. What do I do next? Yeah. So we're going to keep this going. We're going to be conducting the next phase of our research and
[00:10:56] we'll be reaching out to those folks who participated to see if they want to help us on the next phase and our next journey in doing this. But aside from that, my hope is that we can just,
[00:11:07] you know, thrive on contagion here and just make this something that just continues to penetrate our society little by little from person to person, word of mouth. And so for those folks
[00:11:21] who are really motivated by this and want to keep the momentum going, you know, I'd say start in your small circles of the world in getting your family, your friends, your work colleagues moving. That was my conversation with Keith Diaz, assistant professor of behavioral medicine
[00:11:43] at Columbia University Medical Center. If you want to hear the whole series, follow or subscribe to Body Electric wherever you get your podcasts. And you can now sign up for the Body Electric Challenge. Go to npr.org slash body electric.