summary: A new study finds that a “weekend warrior” exercise pattern — concentrating physical activity on one or two days a week — could reduce the risk of more than 200 diseases, including heart disease and diabetes.
The study found that people who exercise on the weekend get just as many benefits as those who spread their exercise evenly throughout the week, so long as they meet the recommended 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity per week. The study analyzed data from almost 90,000 people and highlighted the wide-ranging health benefits of being active, regardless of how you allocate your exercise.
These findings suggest that total amount of exercise, rather than frequency, is the key factor in disease prevention.
Key Facts:
- Weekend warrior exercise can be just as effective at preventing disease as regular weekly exercise.
- Both patterns of exercise significantly reduce the risk of more than 200 diseases, including heart disease and diabetes.
- Regardless of how you allocate it, it’s important to meet the guideline of 150 minutes of exercise per week.
sauce: Massachusetts General Hospital
Some people are so busy with work and other commitments that they focus their moderate to vigorous exercise on one or two days a week or even on weekends.
A study led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (a founding member of the Massachusetts General Brigham Health System) found that this “weekend warrior” exercise pattern was associated with a lower risk of future disease development and was just as effective at reducing risk as more evenly distributed physical activity.
The result is circulation.
“Physical activity is known to affect the risk of many diseases,” said co-senior author Shaan Khurshid, MD, PhD, faculty member in the Demoulas Cardiac Arrhythmia Center at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Here we show that weekend sports activity has potential benefits not only for cardiovascular disease risk, as we have shown before, but also for the risk of future diseases across the whole range of conditions such as chronic kidney disease to mood disorders.”
Guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise per week for overall health. But among people who meet these recommendations, will those who exercise for 20 to 30 minutes most days of the week see more benefits than those who go five or six days between their longer exercise sessions?
Khurshid, along with co-senior author Patrick Elinor, MD, PhD, acting chief of cardiology and co-director of the Corrigan Minehan Heart Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, and colleagues, analyzed information on 89,573 individuals who participated in a prospective UK Biobank study who wore accelerometers on their wrists to record their total physical activity and the time they spent engaging in different intensities of exercise over a week.
Participants’ physical activity patterns were categorized into weekend active, regularly active, and inactive using a guideline-based threshold of 150 minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.
The team then looked at associations between physical activity patterns and the incidence of 678 symptoms across 16 disease categories, including mental health, gastrointestinal, neurological and other categories.
The researchers’ analysis found that weekend exercise and regular physical activity patterns were each associated with a significantly lower risk of more than 200 diseases compared with inactivity.
The strongest associations were for cardiometabolic diseases such as hypertension (23% and 28% lower risk over an average six-year period for weekend and regular exercisers, respectively) and diabetes (43% and 46% lower risk, respectively), but the associations extended across all disease categories examined.
“Our findings were consistent across different definitions of weekend activity and other criteria used to classify people as active,” Khurshid said.
The results suggest that physical activity may be broadly beneficial in lowering the risk of future disease, particularly cardiometabolic disease. “Weekend exercise and regular exercise appear to have similar benefits, so it may be the total amount of activity, rather than the pattern, that matters most,” Khurshid said.
“Future interventions testing the effectiveness of intensive activity aimed at improving public health are justified, and patients should be encouraged to engage in guideline-compliant physical activity using the pattern that seems most effective to them.”
author: Shinwan Kany, MD, MS; Mostafa A. Al-Alusi, MD; Joel T. Rämö, MD, PhD; James P. Pirruccello, MD; Timothy W. Churchill, MD; Steven A. Lubitz, MD, Public Health Mahnaz Maddah, MD; J. Sawalla Guseh, MD; Patrick T. Ellinor, MD, PhD; Shaan Khurshid, MD, MPH.
Disclosure: Elinor has received research support from Bayer AG, IBM Research, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, and Novo Nordisk, and serves on advisory boards or as a consultant for Myocardia and Bayer AG. Lubitz is an employee of Novartis as of July 2022, has received research support from Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Fitbit, Medtronic, Premier, and IBM, and serves as a consultant for Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Blackstone Life Sciences, and Invitae.
Funding: This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (K08HL159346, K23HL159262-01A1, 1RO1HL092577, 1R01HL157635, 5R01HL139731, 18SFRN34230127, 961045, R01HL157635, T32HL007208, K23HL169839-01), a Walter Benjamin Fellowship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (521832260), the Sigrid Juselius Foundation, and the American Heart Association (19AMFDP34990046, 18SFRN34230127, 961045, 18SFRN34250007, 2023CDA1050571), Harvard University Presidential and Research Fellowship (5KL2TR002542-04), and the European Union (MAESTRIA 965286).
About this exercise and health research news
author: Brandon Chase
sauce: Massachusetts General Hospital
contact: Brandon Chase – Massachusetts General Hospital
image: Image courtesy of Neuroscience News
Original Research: The survey results are circulation
