Is it worth exercising only on weekends? That’s what scientists from Harvard and MIT say

Sometimes it can be difficult to organize the week to allow two or three days for physical exercise. Perhaps during the weekend there is a greater desire to carry out this activity. Although, will it be the same? Scientists have managed to determine if physical exercise condensed into one or two days has a difference in the body compared to those who have routines on workdays . Their results were recently published and could revolutionize the exercise routine paradigm.

scientists of the Cardiovascular Disease Initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the universities of Harvard, Cambridge and Massachusetts analyzed nearly 90,000 individuals who provided data on concentrated physical activity over 1-2 days.

The study was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and it has been found that people who engage in physical activity during the week, how during the weekends they reduced the risk of heart attacks, heart failure and strokes among others.

According to the recommendations given by the specialists, on average, adults should complete 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) of moderate to vigorous activity per week. With this, Harvard researchers were surprised to discover that people who got their hours of activity in one or two days reduced their risk of heart attack by 27%, compared to 35% in people who exercised several days a week.

Those who exercised on weekends also saw their risk of heart failure drop by 38%, compared to 36% in regular athletes, according to the study. “The idea of ​​being able to fit everything into a weekend or two days a week was a bit surprising. ”, says NBC he study co-author Dr. Patrick Elinor , acting chief of cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

In conclusion, the researcher stated that getting 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity a week is the goal, “no matter how you get there.”

To take a closer look at how the timing of exercise made a difference, the researchers turned to the UK Biobank , a widely used database of 502,629 participants. They focused on 89,573 of the participants who wore the accelerometers for a week, most of whom were followed for 6.3 years. The researchers called the participants “weekend warriors” regular or inactive athletes.

A major limitation of the study is that activity data was only collected for one week, Ellinor said, so they don’t know if participants continued the same exercise regimen during the follow-up period.

Still, the take-home message is that people should get 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity each week, the Dr. John McPherson, cardiologist and professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. “It can be bundled into two days or it can be 25-30 minutes each day” he added.

In this research, they found that the active regular pattern and the active pattern “weekend warrior” were associated with very similar reductions in heart attack risk , heart failure, atrial fibrillation and stroke. “If you can reach those guideline-recommended levels for one or two days a week, our results show you get a similar benefit for people who can dispense it. more fairly.” told CNN he Dr. Shaan Khurshid, electrophysiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Research on this subject is not over, say the scientists in charge of this study. Additionally, the scientists revealed that they plan to continue to study how activity patterns affect risk similarly for diseases across the spectrum.