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Fit with just five minutes’ exercise a day? I don’t believe it | Devi Sridhar

Everyone these days wants to optimise their workouts, but when a study seems too good to be true, it usually is Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh We live in an increasingly polarised world – and I’m not talking about politics, I’m talking about exercise. There’s a fitness community obsessed with constant optimisation and hacks : how can you get from 50 press-ups to 100, from an eight-minute mile to seven minutes, or increase your deadlifts from body weight to double or triple body weight – ideally using just “one weird trick” or novel method no one has seen before. It seems as if no one is happy with basic fitness or steady progress. Or people are overly concerned with what’s secretly holding them back, from sleep to “I had a couple of glasses of wine … it ruined three days of my life ” (that’s Steven Bartlett’s podcast ). Prof Devi Sridhar

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According to The Guardian’s source item, Fit with just five minutes’ exercise a day? I don’t believe it | Devi Sridhar, Everyone these days wants to optimise their workouts, but when a study seems too good to be true, it usually is Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh We live in an increasingly polarised world – and I’m not talking about politics, I’m talking about exercise. There’s a fitness community obsessed with constant optimisation and hacks : how can you get from 50 press-ups to 100, from an eight-minute mile to seven minutes, or increase your deadlifts from body weight to double or triple body weight – ideally using just “one weird trick” or novel method no one has seen before. It seems as if no one is happy with basic fitness or steady progress. Or people are overly concerned with what’s secretly holding them back, from sleep to “I had a couple of glasses of wine … it ruined three days of my life ” (that’s Steven Bartlett’s podcast ). Prof Devi Sridhar

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The development sits in VINI’s Science file for readers following research, health, climate, space, medicine, and scientific institutions. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The source item is dated 2026-06-23T07:00:35+00:00.

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Primary source: Fit with just five minutes’ exercise a day? I don’t believe it | Devi Sridhar via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.

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