Due to their busy schedules, some people concentrate their moderate-to-vigorous exercise on one or two days of the week or on the weekend. A study led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, has found that this “weekend warrior” pattern of exercise is associated with a lower risk of developing future diseases (264 in total) and is just as effective at decreasing risk as more evenly distributed exercise activity. The results have been published in Circulation.
“Physical activity has been found to impact the risk of many diseases,” stated co-senior author Shaan Khurshid, MD, MPH, a faculty member in the Demoulas Center for Cardiac Arrhythmias at Massachusetts General Hospital. “In this study, we demonstrate the potential benefits of weekend warrior activity not only for reducing the risk of cardiovascular diseases, as we have previously shown, but also for reducing the risk of a wide range of future diseases, including conditions such as chronic kidney disease, mood disorders, and others.”
Are there additional benefits for individuals who exercise for 20-30 minutes most days of the week compared to those who have longer exercise sessions 5 or 6 days apart, even if both groups meet the recommended 150 minutes of physical activity per week?
Khurshid, along with co-senior author Patrick Ellinor, MD, PhD, the acting chief of Cardiology and the co-director of the Corrigan Minehan Heart Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, and their colleagues analyzed data from 89,573 individuals in the UK Biobank study. The participants wore wrist accelerometers that recorded their total physical activity and time spent at different exercise intensities over one week. The researchers categorized the participants’ physical activity patterns as weekend warrior, regular, or inactive based on the guideline of 150 minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.
The team then sought associations between patterns of physical activity and the incidence of 678 conditions across 16 types of diseases, including mental health, digestive, neurological, and other categories.
The investigators found that both weekend warrior and regular physical activity were linked to significantly lower risks of over 200 diseases compared to being inactive. The strongest associations were found for conditions like hypertension (23% and 28% lower risks over a median of 6 years with weekend warrior and regular exercise, respectively) and diabetes (43% and 46% lower risks, respectively). However, the associations also extended to all disease categories that were tested.
“Our findings were consistent across many different definitions of weekend warrior activity, as well as other thresholds used to categorize people as active,” said Khurshid.