Estimated read time: Less than a minute
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
BATON ROUGE, La., Dec 03, 2004 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- A study at Louisiana State University finds that the benefits of regular exercise vary widely, with a small minority of people getting nothing from it.
Researchers put 742 people from 213 families through a 20-week training program that gradually increased their exercise to 50 minutes on a stationary bike three times a week.
The team reports that insulin sensitivity, a marker of risk for heart disease and diabetes, improved in 58 percent of the subjects. But in the other 42 percent there was no improvement, and, for a few, exercise appeared to make their situation worse.
Earlier reports said that the team found that maximum oxygen consumption, heart rate, and blood pressure improved by more than 40 percent for some of the subjects and showed no improvement for a few.
"There is astounding variation in the response to exercise," said Claude Bouchard, one of the authors of the article published in this week's New Scientist.
Copyright 2004 by United Press International.
