Exercise for 30 minutes a day for real health benefits

[LahoreEstate]

Monday, March 23, 2009
LAHORE: For real health benefits, people should exercise for 30 minutes a day five times a week, a new study has found.

Although pedometers (which measure how much we walk) are widely used as a physical activity monitoring tool, they are unable to measure activity intensity. Researchers have determined that a rate of at least 100 steps per minute achieves moderate intensity activity.

Therefore a simple pedometer-based recommendation of 3,000 steps in 30 minutes can get people started on a meaningful exercise programme.

While being monitored for oxygen uptake during walking on a treadmill, 58 women and 39 men completed four to six-minute sessions at different treadmill speeds between 65 and 110 metres per minute.

All wore pedometers and their heart rates were recorded. Using 3 METs, or metabolic equivalents, as the minimum level of oxygen demand which approximates moderate exercise, participants were monitored to determine whether they had reached the moderate-exercise level at a given treadmill speed. From these data, the researchers found that for men, step counts associated with walking at three METs were between 92 and 102 steps per minute.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=168599