Exercise Is Good For Some, Better For Others

No, it’s not fair: the benefits of exercise are not created equal. According to research conducted at Brown University, the type of people who get the most from their efforts are men, people under 50, and people battling type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems. How do they know? Because when the researchers analyzed the results of 160 randomized clinical trials with nearly 7,500 participants, that’s just what they found: men often benefitted more than women, people under 50 benefitted more than people over that age, and people with either type 2 diabetes, hypertension or hyperlipidemia benefitted more than people with none of those conditions. The finding included the review’s main clinical indicators of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), which measures how well the heart and lungs deliver oxygen to the muscles during physical activity. CRF is a strong predictor of cardiovascular disease (CVD).  Wait, there’s more: the researchers found that exercise appears to lower “bad” LDL cholesterol for at least some people and raise “good” HDL for most, although, and here’s the bad news, “the proportion of CVD risk that could have been reduced by exercise via effects on total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol is much lower than what has been observed previously.” Instead, the researchers note, some of the significant benefits of exercise appear to lie in reducing insulin resistance and inflammation based on how those biomarkers performed in the studies.