Everyone always wishes that they worked out more. Most Americans don’t even get the recommended amount of exercise in. But is there such a thing as too much of a good thing? Well the answer is yes. Exercise provides many health benefits provide many health benefits that even increase how long you are able to live for (Exercise Increases Life Expectancy). Exercise helps improve mood, helps control weight, combats health diseases, boosts energy levels and can even promote better sleep. But when do the benefits give way to detrimental effects?
At some point working out too hard or too long increases the risk of injury and other adverse effects. This detrimental effect usually only happens with intense exercise, like training for marathons or endurance activities where you put your body under increased stress for extended periods of time.
In a British study of more than a million healthy middle-aged women in Circulation, those who were physically active at least once a week were less likely to have heart attacks, strokes or blood clots in the legs or lungs over a nine-year period than inactive women. Also activities including gardening and housework showed the same effects as being physically active. But the key observation from the study showed that women who exercised every day didn’t benefit more than the less frequent exercisers. In fact the study showed that the women were at a greater risk of detrimental stress. The study also showed the best health benefits to the woman who exercised at least two times a week, and no more than six times, had the lowest cardiovascular risk, compared to infrequent or daily exercisers.
I always knew that exercising too much could be bad for you, but I never knew why. It seems as though every time I am watching something involving celebrities, they all say (or claim) that they work out vigorously every single day of the week. In the first place, I never understood how they managed to find time for that. Now I am wondering if they know that exercising 7 days a week is not as beneficial as you would think. I believe that some people truly become addicted to exercising: they begin to see results and they want to constantly improve. While improvement is always important, it is also vital not to overdo it. I think that another drawback to those who like to exercise 7 days a week is finding the time to do so. This could increase stress levels among individuals.
What a cool study to take a look at! Exercising can mean so many different things–swimming, dancing, doing yoga, running, etc. It makes me wonder if certain types of exercise are OK to do on a daily basis for X number of hours. Like would doing yoga for 2 hours each day too much? I can understand that 2 hours of running a day may be too much, but yoga? I think it’d be cool if there was a study that looked at a number of different exercises and determined how often to a healthy amount of to do them.