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How Much Exercise Is Good for You?

| April 16, 2015 Comment

How Much Exercise Is Good for You? Two studies provide the answer to this question.

While we all know that some exercise is better than none, there hasn’t been definitive recommendations on the ideal amount of exercise. There have also been questions about the safety of too much exercise. Two new studies published in JAMA Internal Medicine, provide seek to answer these questions.

Researchers with the National Cancer Institute, Harvard University and other institutions looked at exercise data on over 661,000 mostly middle-aged adults from ongoing health surveys. The current exercise recommendations are 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week. Based on this, the researchers catogorized participants into three groups, those who did not exercise at all, to those who met the recommendations, and those who worked out 10 times the current recommendations.

Researchers the compared the death records for the groups over 14 years.They found that participants who did not exercise at all were at the highest risk of dying prematurely. Those who exercised a little but didn’t quite meet the recommendations still derived benefits, and reduced their risk of premature death by 20%. Those who followed the recommended 150 minutes of exercise a week reduced their risk of premature death by 31%. The best results were for those who did three times the recommended exercise, spending about 450 minutes a week, mostly walking; they lowered their risk by 39%. Beyond 450 minutes of exercise, the benefits plateaued.

The second study looked at intensity of exercise and any negative effects it may have on health.Australian researchers analyzed data on 200,000 Australian adults, and compared time spent on vigrous activity such as running and playing competitive sports, as opposed to moderate exercise such as walking. They then looked at the death recrds, and found results similar to the first study. The important finding to note was that researchers did not find any increased risk of death in those who spent a lot of time in intense exercise.

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