Bacciagalupe

FYI, here's the full study. http://www.healthatwork-online.de/fi...ancet_2011.pdf

The study suggests that the "low-volume" exercise group reduced mortality by 14%, and does point out that the amounts observed are roughly half the typical "150 minutes per week" recommendation. I.e. different studies are making different claims about acceptable minimums.

The study also notes that you get a big jump from a small amount of activity, and beyond that you still get benefits, but they're less dramatic: "Our findings suggest that, for example, 2 hours a week of vigorous-intensity exercise could generate similar health benefits as would 4 hours a week of moderate-intensity exercise. Therefore, people who want to exercise but claim not to have much available time can benefit from the positive health effects of exercise if they do vigorous-intensity exercise once or even twice a week (eg, at weekends)."

From the CCHS jogger study: "Surprisingly, we found that up to 2.5 hours of jogging a week at a slow or average pace and a frequency of ≤3 times per week seems to be associated with the lowest mortality. Thus, we found a U-shaped relationship between jogging and mortality, so we don’t have evidence to support faster or more frequent jogging, nor do our limited data rule out this possibility. Irrespective of jogging duration, pace, and frequency, the mortality was lower among joggers than nonjoggers."

And again, this is merely a tiny slice of decades of research. Journalists may on occasion breathlessly describe a new study as the end-all and be-all, but again, it's all pieces of an incomplete puzzle.


So, I don't think the researchers are sandbagging because they don't think people will do anything at all. It's that there is still room for debate and research about the minimum required to get a benefit.