Everyone Can—and Must—Find Time to Exercise

If so, take this chance to read about two recently published reports that stress the value of exercise in preventing significant health risks. The first study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, followed 73,000 postmenopausal women for an average of 3.2 years. In this study, JoAnn E. Manson, M.D, Dr.P.H., of the division of preventive medicine at Harvard University, and colleagues found that women who either walked briskly or exercised vigorously at least two and a half hours per week had a 30 percent lower risk of heart-related problems such as heart attack, stroke, the need for heart bypass surgery, heart failure or death than the least active women.1

The second study, which followed a group of young girls through adolescence to their later teenage years, found that the level of physical activity declined precipitously over time, so that by the age of 18 or 19, up to 56 percent of the girls reported no regular physical activity. Not surprisingly, a significant number of girls were overweight.2 Together, the message from these studies is pretty powerful: Exercise is important—and as a nation, we’re not getting it done.

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