Couch potatoes’ illness reversible!

NEW YORK: Couch potatoes can lower their risk of developing heart disease and other health conditions, if they start spending as much time exercising as they previously spent being inactive, new research suggests.

In the study, people whose fitness deteriorated when they volunteered to be physically inactive for six months, had a complete reversal when they increased their activity level during the next six months.

Study co-author Jennifer Robbins, an exercise physiologist at Duke University in North Carolina presented her team’s findings during last week’s annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine, held in Denver, Colorado.

“Although exercise is known to enhance health, the extent to which one can reverse the debilitating effects of inactivity is unknown,” Robbins and her associates note. To look into that issue, they studied mildly overweight but otherwise healthy individuals who were instructed to not make any changes in their diet or exercise level for six months. These participants afterwards elected to follow the study’s exercise programme for six months.

During their period of inactivity, participants experienced deterioration in their waist size, how quickly they became exhausted while using a treadmill, and their visceral fat. After six months of exercise, however, the participants decreased their waist size, lost weight, exercised longer before becoming exhausted, lowered their cholesterol and otherwise improved their health, according to Robbins.

This is good news for those who recently gained weight. “They may be the ones who have the most benefit” from increasing physical activity, Robbins said.