More is not better

IN the last few decades, more and more people have taken to a regular regime of exercise. While exercise intuitively appears to be better than physical inactivity, less is known about what the optimal intensity or duration of exercise should be.

You have finished your regular daily routine of vigorous physical exercise programme, shed some fat around your tummy and toned your muscles. Hence, you would have expected that your risk of stroke and heart attack should be lower. While this would seem rational and logical, the "Million Women Study", a large prospective study of healthy middle-aged women in the UK published recently in 2015 in the Circulation journal, seems to show that more may not be better.

Exercise versus physical inactivity