People cramming their entire week’s exercise in one or two days or over the weekend could be at a lower risk of developing over 200 diseases, with similar effects to those who exercise throughout the week, a study has found.
‘Weekend warriors’ are individuals who engage in moderate or vigorous physical activity over the weekend and yet meet the World Health Organization’s recommendations of 150 minutes of exercise per week for overall health.
However, researchers said it is not clear if ‘weekend warriors’ experience more health benefits compared to those distributing their exercise in durations of 20-30 minutes on most days of the week.
“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,” said Shaan Khurshid, a faculty member at Massachusetts General Hospital, US, and a senior author on the study.
In a study, published in July in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), the team had found that the weekend warrior style of exercise was associated with a lower risk of heart disease and stroke compared to exercise performed evenly over a week.
The research, published in the journal Circulation, analysed data from nearly 90,000 individuals in the UK Biobank dataset.
Participants wore wrist accelerometers for a week between June 2013 and December 2015, which recorded their total physical activity, including duration and intensity. They were classified under ‘weekend warrior’, ‘regular’, or ‘inactive’.
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The study examined links between physical activity patterns and incidence of 678 conditions across 16 types of diseases, including mental health, digestive and neurological ones.
Both weekend warriors and regulars were found to have significantly lower risks of developing over 200 medical conditions, particularly cardiometabolic ones like hypertension and obesity, compared to those inactive.
Further, the disease risk reduction was similar for both weekend warriors and regulars, with no significant differences in risk across any condition between the two groups, the researchers said.
“Achievement of measured physical activity volumes consistent with guideline recommendations is associated with lower risk for (over) 200 diseases, with prominent effects on cardiometabolic conditions,” the authors said.
“Associations appear similar whether physical activity follows a weekend warrior pattern or is spread more evenly throughout the week,” they added.
The findings were consistent across many different definitions of weekend warrior activity, as well as other thresholds used to categorise people as active, said Khurshid.
