MedPageToday said:To test their hypothesis, the authors recruited 16 healthy young men (median age 21) to participate in a trial of high-intensity interval training. None of the volunteers was involved in a structured program of physical activity.
Over the course of two weeks, the participants completed six sessions of supervised high-intensity interval training. Each session consisted of four to six 30-second sprints on a stationary bicycle.
At baseline and at the end of the two weeks, the authors assessed the participants' aerobic performance in a self-paced cycling time trial, as well as glucose, insulin and non-esterified fatty acids response to a 75-g oral glucose tolerance test.
The end-of-study measurements showed significant improvement in each parameter of glucose tolerance.
Reuters said:"The simple idea is if you are doing tense muscle contractions during sprints or exercise on a bike you really enhance insulin's ability to clear glucose out of the bloodstream," Timmons said.
The findings highlight a way for people who do not have time to work out a few hours each week as recommended to improve their health, he added.
But I wonder if the people who think that they can get healthy by exercising 7 minutes per week (like the title of the Reuter's article says) realize that HIIT means exercising at full effort for those 7 minutes (in 30 second or whatever chunks).