If making time to visit the gym every day is a struggle then there might be an easier way to hit weekly exercise goals – dancing around your kitchen for 20 minutes every morning is enough to reap health benefits, scientists say.

Adults should take part in 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous intensity exercise per week, according to current guidelines.

Researchers recruited 48 people to investigate how much time you would need to spend casually dancing to constitute “moderate” exercise.

The volunteers, aged between 18 and 83, took part in five-minute bursts of dancing, with and without music. Experience ranged from none to 56 years of dance training.

The group was reassured that researchers “would not really be watching” and would be “mostly focused on the data” during the dance bouts.

Study leader Dr Aston McCullough, from Northeastern University, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual conference in Boston: “The main idea was to understand whether the intensity that people would receive from dancing freely on their own would be enough to be a health-enhancing physical activity.

“And the answer was yes. All adults were able to reach a health-enhancing level of activity without being told what intensity to dance at.

“They just put on their own music and danced around – and even when they didn’t have music on they were still reaching that level.”

Participants’ oxygen intake and heart rate were measured and analysis found all reached at least a moderate physical activity level.

However, they were more likely to achieve a higher heart and respiratory rate when dancing to music.

Dr McCullough added: “The main idea for us is that dance is a really accessible form of physical activity that people can do, is even in their homes.

“Most people think of dance as something that is light and really easy, but really if you just tell someone to ‘have a dance’ they’re going to get to that level of intensity that you would ask them to do if you were a personal trainer.”