Sunday, October 6, 2024, 01:14
Physical inactivity is one of the main risk factors for mortality from non-communicable diseases. People who do not exercise enough have a 20 percent to 30 percent higher risk of mortality than those who are sufficiently active. But the truth is that not everyone can do some sport continuously and almost daily as recommended by medical societies.
The guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week for general health. However, among people who meet these recommendations, do those who exercise 20 to 30 minutes most days of the week experience more benefits than those who spend 5 or 6 days doing nothing, but one or two days with sessions of longer periods of exercise?
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in the US discovered long ago that performing the recommended weekly amounts of physical activity can reduce the risk of a wide range of conditions, now they have analyzed whether those benefits are the same if the exercise is concentrated in one or two days or distributed throughout the week.
‘Weekend Warrior’
The main takeaway is that people who find it difficult to find time to exercise during the work week can concentrate their moderate to vigorous physical activity on one or two days of the week or on the weekend. And the second is that this physical activity, which they define as the ‘weekend warrior’, can help protect against more than 264 future diseases.
The guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week for general health. The results, which were published in ‘Circulation’, indicate that if they are concentrated in a day or two it is also worth it. Therefore, if you want to have the same benefits as training regularly (about 20 to 30 minutes minimum each week), researchers recommend doing two and a half hours of moderate to vigorous activity in one day or two, if you spread it out it is recommended Do at least half the time the first day.
“Here, we show the potential benefits of weekend physical activity for the risk not only of cardiovascular disease, as we have shown in the past, but also of future diseases spanning the spectrum, from conditions such as chronic kidney disease to mood disorders and more,” says co-senior author Shaan Khurshid, a faculty member at the Demoulas Center for Cardiac Arrhythmias at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Physical activity is known to affect the risk of many diseases,” says Khurshid, who along with co-senior author Patrick Ellinor, acting chief of cardiology and co-director of the Corrigan Minehan Heart Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, and colleagues analyzed data on 89,573 people in the UK Biobank prospective study.
For the research, they used wrist accelerometers that recorded their total physical activity and time spent at different exercise intensities over a week. Participants’ physical activity patterns were classified as weekend warriors, regular, or inactive, using the guideline-based threshold of 150 minutes per week of moderate to vigorous physical activity.
Among participants, 33.7% were inactive (less than 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week), 42.2% were active weekend warriors (at least 150 minutes with at least half accomplished in 1 or 2 days) and 24.0% were regularly active (at least 150 minutes with most of the exercise spread over several days).
The team then looked for associations between physical activity patterns and the incidence of 678 conditions across 16 disease types, including mental health, digestive, neurological and other categories.
The researchers’ analyzes revealed that regular and weekend physical activity patterns were associated with substantially lower risks of more than 200 diseases compared with inactivity. The associations were strongest for cardiometabolic diseases such as hypertension (23% and 28% lower risks over a median of 6 years with weekend and regular exercise, respectively) and diabetes (43% and 46% lower risks). minors, respectively). However, the associations also spanned all disease categories analyzed.
“Our findings were consistent across many different definitions of ‘weekend warrior’ activity, as well as other thresholds used to categorize people as active,” Khurshid says.
The results suggest that physical activity is generally beneficial in reducing the risk of future diseases, especially cardiometabolic diseases. “Given that there appear to be similar benefits to weekend physical activity compared to regular activity, it is possible that it is the total volume of activity, rather than the pattern, that matters most,” Khurshid adds.
“Future interventions testing the effectiveness of concentrated activity to improve public health are warranted, and patients should be encouraged to engage in physical activity that meets recommended guidelines using whatever pattern may work best for them,” he adds. .