Nutrition Videos

Hi! I'm Stelios Pantazis. I'm a doctor and I specialize in medical nutrition and metabolic disorders. Today, I'll tell you how much exercise protects our heart's health. There are two kinds of people: those that enjoy exercising and those that have fun after exercising. No, this is not a joke, it's the reality. Most people that exercise do so for the benefits they have after exercising. The reason they exercise is not how they feel during the one hour of exercise, but how they feel in the remaining 23 hours of the day. This applies to the vast majority of people. However, there's a small group of people to which the opposite applies. They really enjoy exercising and they don't have so much fun after exercising, or even count the hours until they start exercising again. I belong to the second category. I really enjoy exercising and after exercising, the only thing I think about is when I'll exercise again. Very few people belong to this category. Therefore, I take advantage of exercise in order to have a beautiful routine. I made this short introduction in order to tell you that I love exercising, but I believe that some experts promise that exercise can do much more than it can really do for your health. Studies have shown that the benefits of exercise are maximised after two or three hours of exercise a week, and after that, essentially, if your goal is good health, there's no point trying much more and spending more time. One more study has been published recently that has shown exactly this. Let's see this in more detail. The study was not long-term enough to show the heart's health, but it studied the three main risk factors that are linked to the heart's health: blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol. The study studies the frequency of these significant risk factors for the heart's health in people depending on their weight and their activity level. It would be really interesting to see in the long term if this will be translated into fewer heart attacks or other heart diseases, but, for the time being, the risk factors are rather significant. The study included this great graph that you can see on your screen. The participants have been divided into three groups. The first group includes people with normal weight, namely a BMA up to 25. The next column includes overweight people, namely with a BMA up to 30. The third column includes people with a BMA equal or more than 30. Each column is divided into three subcolumns depending on the activity level mentioned by the participants. On the left, we can see the people that were defined as active, namely the people exercising as much as recommended by the guidelines. On the right, we can see the people that do not exercise at all. Finally, in the middle, we can see the people that exercise, but not as much as recommended by the guidelines. Each subcolumn has three coloured dots. The orange dots represent the risk of increased cholesterol. The green dots represent the increased risk of high blood pressure. And the purple dots represent the risk of diabetes. The higher these dots are, the higher the risk. Let's compare some subcolumns and see how the risk is translated. All comparisons are made with normal-weight people that are active, namely that exercise as much as recommended by the guidelines or more. I'll start with the comparison of normal-weight people that exercise according to the guidelines and people that don't exercise at all, but have normal weight. You can see that the risk of increased cholesterol is real, but it's low, approximately 10%. On the contrary, the risk of diabetes is rather increased, approximately 41%. The risk of hypertension is in the middle. Now, let's compare a normal-weight person that doesn't exercise and an overweight person that is not obese and exercises according to the guidelines. You can see here that the risk of high cholesterol is much higher. The risk of hypertension is even higher and reaches 92%, while the risk of diabetes is a bit lower. In total, the risk of heart disease is higher. Namely, if you're overweight and you exercise as much as recommended by the guidelines, your heart health is worse than that of a normal-weight person that doesn't exercise at all. Let's compare obese people. How much does exercise protect an obese person's heart health? You can see the dots here are really high. The green and purple dots, which show the risk of hypertension and diabetes are really higher and show that the risk of hypertension increases by 500% and the risk of diabetes increases by 350%. Even if we compare obese people that exercise and don't exercise at all, we'll notice some difference, which, however, is small compared to people with lower weight or even to overweight people. So, what's the study's conclusion? The conclusion is clear. A person that has increased weight and wants to protect their heart should focus on losing weight, which is rarely achieved with exercise. Exercise alone doesn't help you lose weight nor does it protect the heart so much that it can tolerate high weight. This person should dedicate a large part of their life in order to change their diet and bring their weight down to normal levels. Exercise alone does not protect the heart nor does it help you lose weight. I spent much time in the beginning to tell you how much I love exercising, so that you understand that I'm not a person that doesn't exercise. On the contrary, I'm a person that exercises many hours a week. But my goal is neither my heart's health nor the maintenance of my weight. My goal is to have fun. I exercise a lot because I have fun while exercising. I don't exercise because it's good for my heart, and I don't exercise in order to be able to eat more. I exercise because I have fun while exercising. But I know many people that don't enjoy exercising. They feel great the remaining 23 hours of the day that they don't exercise and they consider this very useful. But if you exercise for good health, 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week, such as walking, are usually enough to provide all the benefits of exercise. If you increase your time of exercise to 300 minutes, this will barely benefit you more. It'd be best if you spent these 150 extra minutes chopping salad and peeling fruits. This will benefit your health more, if you eat them too. If you thought this was interesting, please give us a thumbs up. Share it with people who you think might find it interesting and subscribe to our channel in order to get notified when we upload a video. You can also suggest subjects in the comment section. Thank you very much!