Regular exercise has long been known to have a positive effect on one's well-being.
However, a recent study here in South Korea has found that daily exercise where you break a serious sweat can actually be worse for you than exercising a few times a week.
Park Se-young has more.
Sweating is often seen as a sign of a good workout, and when it comes to exercise, many people think that more is better.
However, a 13-year study on nearly 260-thousand people by Yonsei University Graduate School of Public Health has found otherwise.
The researchers found that people who exercised until sweaty three or four times a week were 14 percent less likely to have high blood pressure, 13 percent less likely to get diabetes, 21 percent less likely to have a heart attack and 20 percent less likely to have a stroke …than those who did not exercise at all.
But exercising every single day actually reduced these preventive effects or got rid of them entirely.
That's because exercising without taking a day off to rest does not give the body enough time to recover …and puts a burden on the heart and blood vessels.
The researchers say there is such a thing as too much exercise, …and that regular vigorous exercise three to four times a week is enough to keep one healthy.
In fact, the US National Institute on Aging has found that weekend workouts alone can be enough to prolong life.
In a six-year study of 34-hundred men and women over age 40, researchers found that those who exercised one or two days a week had the same low death rates as those who exercised multiple days a week.
These so-called "weekend warriors" also had health benefits similar to those who met the goals of 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity a week set by the Physical Activity Guideline for Americans.
Experts have pointed out that this study can't prove whether it was exercise that reduced death rates, ...but added that all physical activity is good, …whether done throughout the week or crammed into the weekend.
Park Se-young, Arirang News.