A new study looked at how make-up can impact skin during a workout. MoMo Productions/Getty Images
A new study shows wearing a foundation during exercise can cause changes in skin and its pores.
Dermatologists said wearing make-up while working out can clog the pores and potentially cause acne.
Healthier alternatives to foundation include beauty balm and color-correcting creams.
When it comes to skincare, it’s well-known that removing makeup before bed is important. This helps to prevent clogged pores, acne and other skin issues.
And as it turns out, makeup during exercise can also be problematic.
According to a new study, wearing a cosmetic foundation during aerobic exercise affects the skin and its pores.
The findings were published in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology.
How foundation makeup can affect the skin during a workout
Researchers examined 43 healthy college students including 20 males and 23 females. Foundation cream was put on the forehead and upper cheek on half of the face. The other half remained bare.
Results showed an increase in moisture post-exercise on the entire face, but there was more moisture in the makeup area.
After exercise, skin pore size increased on the non-makeup of the face, but not as much on the makeup side. The amount of oil increased in the non-makeup area and decreased in the makeup area.
“There is a growing trend of people wearing makeup while exercising,” corresponding author Dongsun Park, PhD, of the Korea National University of Education, told Healthline. “This research suggests significance in studying the changes in the skin condition of individuals who wear makeup while exercising.”
Park continued: “According to this study, wearing heavy makeup like cream foundation during exercise can potentially lead to skin problems such as clogged pores due to sweat accumulation. Therefore, it is recommended to opt for lighter makeup or oil-free products to maintain healthy skin during exercise.”
Here’s how makeup can hurt your skin
Makeup can clog pores and cause increased skin dryness, experts say.
“The reason it is recommended to remove makeup before going to bed is because it can combine with oil and dead skin cells to clog pores and promote acne formation,” said Dr. Brendan Camp, a dermatologist based in New York. “The same [applies] to wearing makeup while exercising. This recent study also suggests that wearing makeup while exercising may predispose the skin to increased dryness.”
This study focused mainly on foundation, but there are many other kinds of makeup.
“Mascara, eyeliner, and lipstick may present less of an issue during exercise because they are not applied to the entire face,” Camp explained.
However, more research is needed to see the impact of specific types of makeup on the skin during a workout.
Foundation alternatives to use while exercising
Some people may feel self-conscious about working out without makeup, especially in a public place. The good news is that there are healthier options than foundations that can provide coverage, according to experts.
“An alternative to foundation is a BB, or beauty balm,” said Camp. “BB creams are a cross between foundation and skincare products. They are often formulated to be non-comedogenic and are intended to improve skin tone and the overall appearance of skin. CC or color-correcting creams are intended to reduce redness or uneven skin tone. They may have a lighter consistency than BB creams.”
How to help your skin post-workout
“After exercising cleanse your skin (face and body) to remove excess oil, sweat, bacteria, and product residue that can contribute to acne or folliculitis,” Camp explained.
Also, “when exercising outdoors remember to protect your skin from the sun. Use an SPF 30 minimum, sunglasses, a hat, and don’t forget to apply sunscreen on your ears, neck, and lips,” said Camp. “Drink water while exercising, which will help your skin remain hydrated but also maintain your body’s water balance.”
Takeaway
Wearing foundation during exercise can affect the skin and its pores, according to a new study.
Dermatologists advise against wearing foundation while working out since it can clog the pores and lead to acne.
For face coverage during exercise, beauty balm (BB) and color-correcting (CC) creams are healthier options.
The picture will bring a lump to the throats of hundreds of…
Without enough sleep, your body’s ability to regulate blood sugar can be disrupted. Maria Korneeva/Getty Images
A new study found that sleeping less than 6 hours a night can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.
If you don’t get enough sleep, the body’s ability to regulate glucose metabolism and appetite hormones is disrupted.
Type 2 diabetes is defined by a buildup of glucose levels when the body cannot react to insulin effectively or is unable to produce enough of it.
People who sleep less than six hours a night are at considerably higher risk for type 2 diabetes than those who sleep seven to eight hours a night, a new study found. And even those with habitual short sleep who follow a healthy dietary regimen carry that risk, suggesting that sleep is a vital element in type 2 diabetes prevention.
The study was published March 5 in JAMA Network Open.
The study followed nearly 250,000 adults in the UK between May and September of 2023. The mean age of the participants was 55.9 years old, and the group had varying dietary habits ranging from “red meat, processed meat, fruits, vegetables, and fish, resulting in a healthy diet score ranging from 0 (unhealthiest) to 5 (healthiest).”
Type 2 diabetes is defined by a buildup of glucose levels when the body cannot react to insulin effectively or is unable to produce enough of it. Treatment for type 2 diabetes most commonly involves careful monitoring of blood sugar levels and medications like metformin or sulfonylureas. Additionally, diet, weight management, and exercise are part of a broader approach to treating the condition.
How does sleep affect the risk of type 2 diabetes?
Dr. Nuha Ali El Sayed, the senior vice president of Health Care Improvement at the American Diabetes Association, who was not involved in the study, told Healthline that dysfunctional sleep patterns have wide-ranging health consequences.
“Sleep disturbances are categorized into long-term and short-term issues, each with different implications for health,” El Sayed said. “Long-term disturbances, such as insomnia, sleep apnea, and restless leg syndrome, result in prolonged periods of inadequate or poor-quality sleep and have been linked to various health problems, including an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Short-term disturbances caused by factors like stress or travel, lead to temporary discomfort or fatigue with less impact on long-term health.”
Melanie Murphy Richter, a registered dietitian nutritionist and the director of communications for the nutrition company Prolon, who was not involved in the study, told Healthline that without adequate and consistent sleep, the body becomes more vulnerable to inflammation, stress, impaired glucose metabolism, and imbalances to appetite hormones.
“Our body runs on circadian rhythms in which all of our organs, tissues and glands operate. When we disrupt these circadian patterns, our body becomes less responsive to insulin, the hormone needed to pull glucose into our cells to be used as fuel. When someone is insulin resistant, the body’s insulin receptors dull, and therefore more glucose floats freely in our blood, causing blood glucose imbalances,” Richter said.
Richter also explained that key hormones called ghrelin and leptin affect our appetites and can be impacted by inadequate sleep.
“Ghrelin, which increases appetite, increases when we lack sleep, likely due to evolutionary reasons for needing energy to continue to find or hunt for food,” Richter said. “This increase in appetite leads to increased eating, most especially sugary or sweet foods, which can exacerbate blood glucose levels.”
Too much or too little sleep linked to health risks
Disrupted sleep can occur at various points in life, for various reasons, but the chronic nature of habitual short sleep duration was the main focus of the study. El Sayed explained that the extremes — not enough sleep (less than 6 hours) or an excess of sleep (more than 9 hours) — contribute to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
“Short sleep duration can contribute to insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance, increased levels of HbA1c (indicating poor long-term glucose control), obesity (a key risk factor for type 2 diabetes), and disruptions in hormones that regulate appetite and metabolism, potentially leading to overeating and weight gain,” El Sayed said. “Conversely, long sleep duration may signal underlying health issues such as depression, sleep disorders, or chronic diseases, which are also risk factors for type 2 diabetes.”
“While research has shown that even one night of poor sleep can negatively impact health, acute phases of sleep deprivation as with new parents, for instance, may not always lead to the development of diseases like T2D,” Richter said. “Yes, the body will absolutely experience temporary disruptions to glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity, but the greater risk associated with T2D is most prevalent in those who are chronically sleep deprived.”
Can napping offset poor sleep?
Brief naps can result in better energy and cognitive function during the day, but they don’t make up for chronic short sleep patterns, Richter said.
“Our bodies need a long stretch of sleep to really do the deep repair work it needs to function properly. It cannot do this as effectively in short bursts, as with napping,” Richter said. “If you are a new parent or in a phase of life where you are temporarily unable to get adequate sleep, naps can help to restore some of this sleep deficit to better support your energy levels, mood and brain health. But you cannot nap your way to better health. Only regular, consistent, and quality sleep every night can do that.”
Takeaway
Chronically inadequate sleep — less than six hours a night — can lead to type 2 diabetes even in people who follow a healthy dietary regime.
Without proper sleep, the body’s ability to regulate glucose metabolism and appetite hormones is disrupted.
Sleep also puts stress on the body and can lead to chronic inflammation, which in turn contributes to the development of type 2 diabetes.
The ‘fawning’ BBC Newsnight documentary about two Syrian refugee brothers who have…
A new study looks at how parents’ weight status may be linked to their child’s weight. MStudioImages/Getty Images
Parents’ weight status in middle age can influence their child’s weight at the same age.
A person is six times more likely to be living with obesity in middle age if both their parents had obesity at the same age.
Genes play a role, but other factors are also involved, such as a family’s dietary and physical activity habits and racism and discrimination.
Your risk of living with obesity in middle age is influenced by whether your parents had obesity at the same age, a new study suggests.
In a multigenerational study in Norway, researchers found that people were six times more likely to be living with obesity in middle age if both their parents had obesity at that age.
If only one parent had obesity in middle age, the risk of obesity was more than three times higher.
“Previous research shows a strong association between parents’ and their children’s obesity status but few studies have investigated whether this intergenerational transmission of obesity continues past adolescence and into adulthood,” says study author Mari Mikkelsen, of the Department of Community Medicine, UiT Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway, in a release.
“We were interested in how parents’ BMI is related to their offspring’s BMI when the offspring is well into adulthood and has lived away from home for a long time,” she said.
The study will be presented in May at the European Congress on Obesity in Venice, Austria. It has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, so the results should be viewed with caution.
Child may be 6 times more likely to be obese if parents also heavier
Researchers used data from the Tromsø Study, a population-based health study that has been going on since 1974.
They examined data on 2,068 parent-child trios. People were middle-aged (40 to 59 years old) when they participated in the Tromsø Study — parents in 1994 to 1995 and children in 2015 to 2016.
By analyzing height and weight data, researchers found a strong association between parents’ BMI and obesity status in middle age and their child’s BMI and obesity status at the same age.
When both parents had been living with obesity in middle age, their child’s risk of having obesity at the same age was six times higher.
The risk was also greater if only one parent had been living with obesity in middle age. When only the mother had obesity, the child’s risk of living with obesity at the same age increased by 3.44 times. If only the father had obesity, the odds were 3.74 times higher.
All of these scenarios were in comparison to children whose parents did not have obesity or were not overweight in middle age.
In the analysis, researchers adjusted for the child’s sex, and for the parents’ and child’s age, education level and physical activity level.
Is obesity genetic or due to environmental factors?
Mikkelsen said their analysis can’t show whether the link between parents’ and child’s obesity status in middle age is due to genes or environment, “but we are most likely looking at a combination of the two.”
“From previous studies, we know that several factors contribute to the shared obesity status between parents and their children,” she said. “Genes play an important role by affecting our susceptibility to weight gain and influence how we respond to obesogenic environments in which it can be easy to eat unhealthily.”
An obesogenic environment is one that makes it easier for people to gain weight and harder for them to achieve weight loss. It includes the buildings, roads, parks, recreational areas, shops, and other businesses in a community — all of which can affect the kinds of food people eat and how easy it is for them to be physically active.
Other research has also found that a person’s risk of having obesity in childhood is greatly influenced by their parents’ weight status.
“Some studies … speculate that children tend to develop similar dietary and exercise habits to their parents when they all live together under the same roof, resulting in a similar BMI status,” said Mikkelsen.
Also, “obesity in childhood, and especially in adolescence, tends to follow the individual into early adulthood and so we suspected it would also follow them into middle age,” she said, which is what she and her colleagues found in their study.
Other studies have had similar results, showing that children living with obesity were more likely to have obesity in adolescence or adulthood, and even into middle age.
However, one study found that 70% of adults living with obesity did not have obesity in childhood or adolescence.
How to combat rising obesity levels
Because of the complex nature of obesity, a broad public health approach will be needed, with a focus on prevention among children, adolescents, and adults.
“Given the [findings] from this study, the focus should be on decreasing the likelihood of children with obesity having the disease as adults,” said Dr. Veronica Johnson, assistant professor of general internal medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine physician, who was not involved in the new research.
“However, this doesn’t address the current disparity where Black and Latino children are [disproportionately] affected by this disease,” she said.
In 2020, the rates of obesity in the United States were 26.2% among Hispanic children, 24.8% among Black children and 16.6% among white children, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In addition, research shows that racism and discrimination, and stress resulting from those — which can affect entire communities for generations — increases the risk of developing obesity.
So “there is a need for [ongoing] efforts to not only address the overall prevalence of obesity, but also focus on the populations that need help the most,” said Johnson.
In addition, she recommends that parents learn about treatment options available to manage their own weight and their child’s.
This is especially important given that obesity increases the risk of many other health problems, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancer.
However, there still remains resistance to using treatment options in children such as medications and bariatric surgery, she said, in spite of recent recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“In this case, lifestyle interventions are imperative to manage weight,” she said. “Parents need to counsel [children] around healthful nutrition, increased physical activity and decreased screen time.”
Takeaway
Researchers from Norway examined data on 2,068 parent-child trios. When they analyzed height and weight data, they found a strong link between parent’s BMI and obesity status in middle age and that of their child’s at the same age.
People whose parents both had obesity in middle age were themselves six times more likely to be living with obesity at the same age. If only one parent had obesity in middle age, the risk was over three times higher.
Many factors contribute to obesity, including genetics, the environment, family eating and exercise habits, and racism and discrimination. These will need to be targeted differently to reduce the impact of parents’ weight status on that of their grown children.
By Terry Zeller For Dailymail.com Published: 21:38 EST, 8 March 2024 |…
Walking at least 2,200 steps helps you reduce your risk of heart disease. SolStock/Getty Images
People can get health benefits from walking 9,000 to around 10,500 steps per day even if they are sedentary for much of the day, a new study found.
Researchers found people start to see benefits after taking just 2,200 steps.
In people with high amounts of sedentary time, this number of steps reduced the risk of death by 39% and cardiovascular disease risk by 21%.
Experts say taking frequent walking breaks during sedentary periods can also improve heart health.
A new study has encouraging news for people whose job or other circumstances require them to sit for much of the day.
Researchers say every daily step you take beyond 2,200 steps per day reduces the risk of death and cardiovascular disease.
These benefits increase up to 9,000 to around 10,500 steps a day. At this level, you will see strong health benefits, even if you have a high amount of sedentary time.
Keith Diaz, PhD, a certified exercise physiologist and associate professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, said the findings simplify the public health message on the benefits of walking.
“We all have the same target, whether we sit for eight hours at work, or we don’t,” he told Healthline. “Everybody should be aiming for 9,000 to 10,500 steps per day. You will achieve comparable health benefits [at this level], and you don’t need to do more.”
Previous research has also shown that walking more during the day is associated with a lower risk of death and cardiovascular disease (CVD) events such as heart attack, stroke and coronary artery disease.
In those studies, the optimal amount of walking ranged from 4,400 steps per day to 10,000 steps per day. Some of this variation may be due to differences among the study participants or how the studies were carried out.
Other research has found that high amounts of sedentary time — sitting or lying down while awake — increases the risk of death and CVD events, as well as type 2 diabetes and death from cancer.
In the new study, researchers looked at both steps per day and sedentary time to see if walking could lower the health risks associated with long periods of sitting.
To do this, they examined data on 72,174 people enrolled in the UK Biobank study. The average age of participants was 61 years, and 58% were female.
In the study, people wore an accelerometer device on their wrist for 7 days to measure their physical activity and sedentary time. On average, participants took 6,222 steps per day.
Researchers used the bottom 5% of people, based on step count, as a comparison group — the cut-off for this group was 2,200 steps per day. This allowed researchers to assess the impact of increasing step count on the risk of death and CVD events.
In addition, the average sedentary time was 10.6 hours per day. Researchers considered people above this level to have high sedentary time and those below to have low sedentary time.
With nearly 7 years of follow-up, 1,633 participants had died and 6,190 experienced one or more CVD events.
After taking into account other factors that might affect the outcomes, researchers found that the amount of walking needed to maximize the health benefits was 9,000 to 10,500 steps per day.
They also estimated that 50% of the benefits occurred with 4,000 to 4,500 steps per day. Both of these scenarios included people with high and low levels of sedentary time.
“These findings align with the longstanding message from fitness experts that incorporating more walking into daily life can substantially improve health outcomes,” said ACE-certified trainer Sabrena Jo, who was not involved in the research.
“The study also underscores the simplicity and effectiveness of walking as a means to counteract the risks associated with sedentary lifestyles and cardiovascular disease,” she told Healthline.
How walking can offset harms of sitting all day
Diaz said the 50%-mark in the study fits with what he and his colleagues have seen in their research on sedentary behavior and walking.
“In our lab studies, what we have found so far is that about 5,000 steps, spread out over the course of eight hours, is what you need to offset the harms of sitting,” he said. “This is the least amount of walking you’d have to do to offset some of these harms.”
In the new study, the benefits and optimum step counts differed slightly for people with high sedentary time and those with low sedentary time.
Among people with a high amount of sedentary time, walking 9,000 to 9,700 daily steps lowered the risk of dying from any cause by 39% and the risk of a CVD event by 21%. This was in comparison to people who walked 2,200 steps or fewer per day.
In the low-sedentary group, walking 9,800 to 10,300 steps per day lowered the risk of dying by 31% and the risk of a CVD event by 29%.
The results also show that, beyond 10,500 steps a day, the risk of death and CVD events continues to drop slightly.
However, at that point, “you’re not reaping much additional benefit,” said Diaz. “Going from 10,000 to 20,000 steps per day will not give the same benefit as going from zero to 10,000.”
The results fit with other research on the benefits of movement, but there are some limitations to this study. First, it is an observational study, so researchers can’t show cause and effect, only that there is an association between daily step count and risk of death or CVD event.
In addition, while the large sample size and the long follow-up reduced some of the potential bias in the analysis, the researchers point out that other factors that they didn’t take into account may have affected the results.
Participants’ step count was also only measured once over a 7-day period. It’s possible that their walking habits may have changed later in the study.
However, based on their findings, the study authors concluded that any amount of walking above 2,200 steps per day was associated with a lower risk of dying or CVD event, regardless of sedentary time.
“Our prospective results provide relevant findings that can be used to augment public health messaging and inform the first generation of stepping-based and device-based physical activity and sedentary guidelines,” they wrote.
Walk more, but also sit less
Walking more — up to a point — is good for your health, as shown by this and other research. But even if you walk 10,000 steps per day, there is still value in reducing the amount of time you spend sitting during the day, if possible.
“For high sitters [aka those with a high amount of sedentary time], their risk of heart disease was greater than low sitters across all amounts of steps,” said Diaz. Researchers found that this difference was about 10%.
So, “it’s about lowering your sitting time, while increasing your stepping time,” he said.
One thing the study didn’t look at is how people’s steps were spread out over the day, something that Diaz and his colleagues focus on.
In a study published last year in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, they found that 5 minutes of walking every 30 minutes improved both blood sugar levels and blood pressure. Taking a 1-minute walking break every 30 minutes also provided benefits, although the impact on blood sugar was lower.
High blood pressure is a risk factor for heart attack and stroke. Elevated blood sugar levels occur in prediabetes and diabetes, which can damage the heart, blood vessels and kidneys.
Diaz’s research shows that reaching the 9,000 to 10,500 steps per day target may be easier than you realize.
“It’s hard to find time to walk for two hours straight,” said Diaz. “But this approach, where you chip away at it and accrue steps over time, is a useful strategy for people who can’t get to the gym.”
How to get more steps every day
Other types of movement may have similar health benefits. But one strength of walking is that it’s a low-impact form of physical activity that is accessible to most people at any age and fitness level, said Jo.
“It can also be tailored to specific health conditions or limitations,” she said, “such as walking at a slower pace or using walking aids if needed.”
And walking doesn’t require any special equipment or gym membership. However, if you prefer to exercise indoors, walking on a treadmill or an indoor track still provides the same health benefits.
To help you add more walking to your day, Jo offers the following tips:
Integrate walking into routine activities, such as running errands, commuting or taking kids to school. During the day, use stairs instead of elevators and escalators, whenever possible.
Make walking a family activity by setting specific times for walks together, such as after dinner.
Use technology to remind yourself to walk throughout the day. Fitness trackers or smartphone apps can also inspire you to set goals for walking a certain number of steps each day.
Create walking meetings at work or take calls while walking.
Explore new places in your neighborhood, city or elsewhere to make walking both exercise and an adventure.
Make it social by walking with friends while catching up, instead of sitting in a café or consuming a meal. Join a walking group or club for additional motivation and support.
Takeaway
Researchers examined data on over 72,000 people who took part in the UK Biobank study. Participants wore an activity monitor on their wrist for 7 days to measure the time spent being active, and also time spent sitting or lying down during waking hours.
Walking 9,000 to 10,500 steps per day was associated with a lowest risk of death or having a cardiovascular event such as heart attack or stroke. This was true even among people who spent more than 10 hours a day being sedentary during their waking hours.
Getting in at least 2,200 steps per day also had health benefits, with 4,000 to 4,500 steps per day providing 50% of the maximum benefit. Taking frequent breaks during sedentary periods can improve heart health and other aspects of health, experts say.
By Mary Mrad For Daily Mail Australia Published: 20:12 EST, 7 March 2024 | Updated: 20:21 EST, 7 March 2024 She tragically lost her late husband Greg Lange to brain cancer in 2010. And Carrie Bickmore, 43, continued his legacy by starting her own charity, Carrie’s Beanies for Brain Cancer. The former Project host has now posed in […]
Leisure activities like walking the dog or gardening can help decrease stroke risk.RealPeopleGroup/Getty Images
Researchers found that even those who did small amounts of exercise showed significant reductions in stroke risk.
The research underscores the importance that “some physical activity is better than none.”
More physical activity still yields more benefits, but experts say every bit helps.
Even low amounts of physical activity per day can significantly improve stroke risk.
While most fitness guidelines focus on an ideal amount of physical activity per day for good health, a new study indicates that even low levels of physical activity are an improvement over doing nothing at all.
The findings also align with the World Health Organization’s 2020 guidelines on physical activity, which emphasize the message: “some physical activity is better than none.”
“[The study] seems to be in line with other research that’s been published recently that shows that even low levels of physical activity can have tremendous benefits in terms of overall health and affecting mortality,” Dr. Michael Fredericson, Director of the PM&R Sports Medicine and co-director of the Stanford Center on Longevity at Stanford Medicine. He wasn’t affiliated with the research.
In the study, published March 5 in BMJ Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, scientists performed a meta-analysis on 15 study articles after reviewing more than 3,000 studies on “leisure-time physical activity,” a catch-all term for any kind of physical activity, no matter the intensity. It encompasses a range of activities from gardening and walking to hiking, biking, and weightlifting.
“We performed a comprehensive meta-analysis of studies including the general population to assess the risk of stroke associated with different levels of leisure-time physical activity. Our most significant result was that even a small amount of physical activity can decrease the risk of stroke,” Dr. Raffaele Ornello, MD, Phd, a neurologist and researcher at the University of L’Aquila, in Italy, and author of the study, told Healthline.
Up to 30% drop in stroke risk
An inactive or sedentary lifestyle is an established risk factor for many chronic diseases, including obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and stroke. While that is well known, just how much physical activity someone needs to see health benefits isn’t as clear. In fact, the study points out that there isn’t even a consensus about the minimum amount of physical activity to decrease risk of stroke.
So, in a world where only one-in-four US adults meet physical activity guidelines, it’s understandable why researchers would want to know what the effects of doing even the bare minimum amount of exercise are on serious outcomes like stroke.
But they’ve picked up a clear signal from across 15 previously published articles that even minimal amounts of physical activity improved the risk of stroke, independent of age and sex.
Compared to individuals who did no leisure-time physical activity whatsoever, those who did even small amounts reduced their risk of stroke by between roughly 10-30%.
The study also found confirmatory results when looking at specific kinds of stroke outcomes. For ischemic stroke, the most common type of stroke, which is caused by an obstruction in a vessel supplying blood to the brain, individuals who demonstrated low levels of physical activity had a 13% reduction in risk compared to those with none.
Results were similar for hemorrhagic stroke, a less common form of stroke that occurs when a blood vessel bursts and begins to bleed in the brain. In this case, low levels of physical activity resulted in a 16% risk reduction compared to no physical activity.
What to know about physical activity
Part of the difficulty of assessing the health benefits of physical activity is its subjective nature: what is “moderate” for one person could be “intense” for another. So, when the researchers set out to do their review, they found differences in how prior studies categorized levels of exercise.
In total, 15 studies were included, which included more than 750,000 individuals, with an average follow-up time of 10 years.
Five of the studies used three levels to categorize physical activity (“none,” “below target,” and “ideal”); six studies used four (“none,” “low,” “moderate,” and “intense”); and two studies used five levels (“none,” “insufficient,” “low,” “moderate,” and “intense”).
But no matter how many categories the studies used or how they defined low levels of exercise, all showed a benefit compared to “none.”
Of course, high levels of physical activity tended to show more benefit as well. Individuals who had “moderate” levels of physical activity had a reduction in stroke risk of about 33%.
Interestingly, when individuals exercised at the highest level, “intense,” benefits seemed to diminish compared to more moderate exercise. In two of the studies, an “intense” showed only a 2% improvement compared to doing no exercise at all.
“There is some concern that these really high levels of exercise are probably not adding to your longevity and in fact could put you at risk for some cardiac issues,” said Fredericson.
How much exercise should you get?
The CDC recommends that adults need 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity and 2 days of muscle-strengthening activity per week. However, it doesn’t have to be done all at once. In fact, breaking up your physical activity into smaller, more manageable chunks is totally acceptable.
Also, physical activity doesn’t mean you have to be putting hours into the gym or doing otherwise strenuous activity. If you enjoy gardening or working outside, that counts. If you walk your dog or spend time stretching in the evening, that does too.
And of course, if you’re motivated to get to jog, lift weights, or play sports, those are other great ways to get in physical activity.
“Even subjects with limited physical capabilities, who can only engage in limited amounts of physical activity, can experience its benefits. So, our main message is to encourage exercise. Even small amounts can make a difference for vascular prevention,” said Ornello.
Finding accessible ways to fit physical activity into your day is more important than the particular type of activity you’re doing.
“It’s really just about keeping people active,” said Fredericson.
“Let’s say you have a knee injury, then maybe you can get in the pool or you can do upper body weightlifting. If you can’t run, maybe you can get on your stationary bike. There’s almost always something you can do,” he said.
The bottom line
Even small amounts of physical activity can significantly improve your risk of stroke, according to a new study.
The more active you are, the better the health effects, but the study indicates that some is better than none at all.
Physical activity includes anything from gardening to jogging to weight lifting, so there are options for people of all ages and fitness levels to engage in.
A 26-year-old woman with terminal cancer who has become a viral star while bravely documenting her battle with the illness online has shared the devastating moment she broke down in tears while taking her first bath in over a year during a bucket list trip to Japan. Madison Baloy, from Tampa, Florida, was diagnosed with […]
