Exercising on a daily basis can counteract the harmful effects that both inactivity and excess food and drink so common at these dates have on short-term health, according to a study conducted by the University of Bath (UK) published in The Journal of Physiology.
Previous research has shown that a weekend with much higher calorie intake than usual is already harmful to health. But, delving into this aspect, this paper explains that a daily dose of physical exercise can help us far beyond just burning the excess calories we have ingested.
For their research, the experts had 26 healthy young adults up to age 30 who were asked to consume more calories than usual for an entire week. Half of the participants were restricted to physical activity (less than 4,000 steps per day) in order to generate a surplus of energy and were asked to consume 50% more calories; the other half were made to run for 45 minutes a day on a treadmill and asked to consume 75% more calories.
Researchers analyzed blood samples from all volunteers at the beginning and end of the week, as well as glucose tests and small abdominal fat samples. After 7 days of the experiment, the differences between the two groups were really striking: the group considered “inactive” showed a significant alteration of the metabolism tilted towards the unhealthy, blood sugar levels rose and fat cells had an overexpression of genes related to nutritional balance.
However, the group that performed high-intensity exercise showed stable levels of sugar levels and, although its fat cells did show some changes in gene expression, they were significantly lower and less harmful than in the group more sedentary.
“The vigorous exercise has offset most of the effects of short-term overfeeding. This new research shows that exercise has positive effects, even when we are actively storing energy and gaining weight,” explains James Betts, co-author of the study.
Thus, it seems clear that a daily (intense) exercise challenge will prevent many of us from mourning the excesses and negative consequences of meals and dinners at this time of year, even though we have gained weight. One less excuse to avoid playing some sport on these very pointed dates.
