Are weekly workouts as good as daily exercise?

Conclusion This study used a large quantity of data from more than 2,000 participants of the Canadian Health Measures Survey to try to gauge how often adults should perform 150 minutes of exercise a week, as recommended by most guidelines. The main finding was that those who met this total physical activity requirement were less likely to have metabolic syndrome than those who were less active, which is not particularly surprising. Lack of exercise is associated with many of the risk factors for metabolic syndrome, such as obesity. Importantly, however, the frequency of time that MVPA was conducted over – whether this was made up of bouts of activity of 10 minutes or longer, or sporadic episodes of less than this – did not seem to make a difference to the risk of metabolic syndrome. However, this study has three very important limitations: This was a cross-sectional survey. As such, it cannot prove cause and effect: it cannot prove that the person's activity level has caused them to have metabolic syndrome, and it could equally be that the person's metabolic syndrome (such as being overweight or having high blood pressure) causes them to be less active. However, it is already known that being physically inactive does contribute to the risk of metabolic syndrome, along with other factors such as diet. The fact that the participants were asked to wear the accelerometer for just one week means that the activity they did during this week may not be representative ...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news