Regular physical activity is essential for health. International guidelines call for at least 150 minutes of moderate or intense exercise a week, and ideally you should divide your workout sessions into daily sessions: 30 minutes a day, five days a week. Easy to say, but not always easy to do: for those who work, have children, or other responsibilities, finding even just half an hour a day to dedicate to health is not easy. There is good news, however: a new study published in the journal Nature Aging confirms that even by concentrating a good portion of the recommended physical activity on the weekend, when you have more free time, the beneficial effects remain unchanged, at least when it comes to brain health.
The research comes from China, and is based on the analysis of data relating to over 75 thousand people stored in the UK Biobank, a large database of health data dedicated to studying the effects of modifiable behaviors on health. The average age of the people involved in the study was 62, and for all of them the information collected by a fit tracker was available, with which it was possible to reconstruct the amount of exercise performed by each person during the week.
Based on their weekly physical activity data, participants were divided into three groups: sedentary, people who did not reach the 150 minutes of physical activity recommended by the guidelines; active, those who managed to accumulate the 150 minutes of exercise by spreading them out over the entire week; “weekend warriors,” people who reached 150 minutes of physical activity, but concentrated more than 50% of the exercise on the weekend.
The study was able to follow participants for an average of 8.4 years, tracking the onset of neurological conditions and mental health problems. The data was then analyzed, adjusting for factors such as gender, age, alcohol consumption or cigarette smoking, which can influence the risk of developing health problems.
The results showed that compared to inactive people, weekend warriors had a 26% lower risk of developing some form of dementia, a 21% lower risk of suffering from stroke, and a 45% lower risk of suffering from Parkinson’s. On the mental health front, weekend workouts were found to lower the risk of suffering from depression by 40% and the risk of suffering from anxiety by 37%, compared to inactivity. Even if you don’t find the time to exercise regularly, any effort you can make – even one or two days a week – seems to pay off in full on the health front.