Don’t have enough time to exercise during the week?
Researchers have found that you’ll reap health benefits from exercise if you book the gym for the weekend.
Data collected from fitness trackers worn by more than 89,000 people showed that those who reserved the NHS-recommended 150 minutes of weekly activity for the weekend reduced their risk of 264 diseases.
Experts in the United States found that so-called “weekend warriors” were up to 43 percent less likely to be diagnosed with diabetes and 23 percent less likely to develop high blood pressure, compared with inactive people.
The findings suggest that “it may be the total volume of activity, rather than the pattern, that matters most,” according to Dr. Shaan Khurshid, a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-author of the study.
US researchers tracked data from 89,000 fitness trackers to determine users’ risk of developing hundreds of diseases over the next six years.
For the study, a team at Massachusetts General Hospital analyzed physical activity information from 89,573 people in the United Kingdom who wore fitness trackers for a week.
Participants’ physical activity patterns were classified as weekend warriors, regular or inactive, using the NHS guideline of 150 minutes per week of moderate to vigorous physical activity.
The team then looked for links between exercise patterns and the incidence of 678 conditions across 16 disease types, including mental health, digestive and cardiovascular, over a six-year period.
One-third of participants were classified as inactive, meaning they engaged in less than 150 minutes (2.5 hours) of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week.
A quarter were regularly physically active, meaning they did at least the same amount of exercise of similar intensity spread over a week.
The rest, 42 percent, were “weekend warriors” and saved their workouts for the weekend.
The results showed that both activity patterns were associated with a significant reduction in life-threatening diseases.
Exercising on weekends can reduce the risk of 264 diseases, compared with not exercising at all, researchers found.
Compared with the inactive group, people who exercised during the week were 35 percent less likely to suffer a heart attack over the next six years, compared with 27 percent of the “weekend warriors.”
What’s more, “weekend warriors” saw lower risks of heart failure, stroke and fatal irregular heart rhythms compared to normally active people.
People who exercised on the weekend were 38 percent more likely to suffer heart failure, compared with 36 percent of regularly active people.
For strokes, the risk was reduced by 21 percent, compared with 17 percent.
However, previous studies have shown that getting enough exercise on the weekend is a challenge.
According to the 2017 report of the According to the American Cancer Society, people with lower incomes are failing to meet the 150 minutes recommended by experts on the weekend because their preferred workout is not intense enough.
Researchers found that the only weekend warriors who meet their weekly exercise needs are wealthy, perhaps because they can afford the exorbitant costs of highly intense training programs like CrossFit.