Not only does exercising have many benefits, but reducing your physical activity actually carries disease risks, according to a letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Rasmus H. Olsen and colleagues.
Their experiment was to ask some of their participants, healthy young adult non-smokers who were moderately physically active in their daily lives, to reduce their physical activity by taking lifts instead of stairs and driving instead of walking whenever possible.
As reported in Eurekalert:
The researchers found that after two weeks of no exercise and very little activity, participants had much higher levels of glucose and fat and took a much longer time to clear the substances from their blood streams than before. The longer it takes the body to clear the blood stream of the substances, the higher the likelihood that a person will develop diabetes or other chronic diseases.
The surprising part of this result is that the effects showed up so quickly, and in people who had reduced their activity from moderate to minimal. It seems even a relatively small amount of walking does you good.
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