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Gentle stroll not enough, experts
advise vigorous exercise
21 August, 2007:
Just taking a stroll is not sufficient
to maintain and improve health; one
must do “vigorous exercise” for at
least 20 minutes three times a week to
keep fit.
The American College of Sports
Medicine and the American Heart
Association have released the new
national guidelines, for the first
time in a dozen years, in which
experts have updated and clarified
national physical activity guidelines
which define the minimum physical
activity required to maintain good
health.
They now want vigorous exercise to be
“explicitly” recommended.
The American College of Sports
Medicine and the American Heart
Association fear that their original
guidance from 1995, which recommended
that adults aged 18-65 engage in at
least 30 minutes’ moderate exercise on
most days of the week, has been
“misinterpreted.”
The proponents of the revised
guidelines wrote in the American Heart
Association’s scientific journal
Circulation: “There are people who
have not accepted, and others who have
misinterpreted, the original
recommendation. Some people continue
to believe that only vigorous
intensity activity will improve
health, while others believe that the
lightest activities of their daily
lives are sufficient to promote
health.”
Experts say that doing something that
raises a sweat – such as jogging or
twice-weekly weight-training – needs
to be added to the list of exercises
in order to stave off increasing
problems such as heart disease and
obesity.
The experts’ original advice was
adopted by the government of the
United Kingdom in 1996 and still forms
the basis of current recommendations –
for people to take 30 minutes of
moderate exercise at least five times
a week.
Sir Liam Donaldson, chief medical
officer for England and Wales, had
suggested in 2004 that this could be
broken down into 10-minute chunks.
The panel of the American College of
Sports Medicine and the American Heart
Association now recommends that people
take moderate exercise half an hour at
least five days a week, plus vigorous
aerobic exercise for at least 20
minutes twice a week, plus two
sessions of weight training or another
form of muscle-strengthening exercise
at least twice a week.
In the second week of August 2007, a
study conducted by Queen’s University,
Belfast, Ireland, had found that
walking for just 30 minutes three
times a week can lower blood pressure
and risk of heart disease.
World Health Organization has
recommended that 30 minutes of gentle
exercise each day would be enough to
sustain a minimum level of fitness.
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