Both regular exercise and intense weekend exercise were found to lower the risk of more than 200 diseases, including hypertension and diabetes. People who engage in more on weekends may achieve similar health benefits to those who follow a more regular, evenly distributed exercise routine throughout the week, according to a recent study. The study, led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in the US, investigated whether concentrating moderate to vigorous exercise into one or two days per week, also referred to as the "weekend warrior" approach, provides the same health benefits as spreading out exercise.
Published in the journal Circulation, it revealed that both exercise patterns were associated with a lower risk of developing more than 200 different diseases. “Physical activity is known to affect risk of many diseases,” Dr Shaan Khurshid, the study’s co-senior author and a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in a statement. “Here, we show the potential benefits of weekend warrior activity for risk not only of cardiovascular diseases, as we’ve shown in the past, but also future diseases spanning the whole spectrum, ranging from conditions like chronic kidney disease to mood disorders and beyond”.
The researchers analysed data from nearly 90,000 individuals in the UK Biobank study and looked into the link between physical activity patterns and the risk of 678 conditions across 16 types of diseases. The participants wore wrist accelerom.
