Some questions just never go away.

• Are we alone in the universe?
• What is the nature of consciousness?
• How much exercise should I really get each week?

Conventional advice from convention health sources says that at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise per week is important to maintain health. The CDC (the good-old-fashioned one, based on real health studies) says so here.

And it turns out almost half of adults in the US get that amount. Which is better than previous studies showed.

But wait– there’s new research out there telling us in no uncertain terms that we were wrong.

I know. I mean, we’ve written so many blog posts about how small intervals of physical activity, whether in short bursts or in longer increments, are a huge boost to health and well-being.

But all those things I said, all the things we said… this is not enough.

THIS IS NOT ENOUGH

@mviti.ae

FW // THIS IS NOT ENOUGH // #foryou #heatedrivalry #ilyarozanov #shanehollander #heatedrivalryedit // FAKE EVERYTHING// HEATED RIVALRY EPISODE 4

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According to a study published in the British Medical Journal last week, the 150-minute amount is more of a minimum threshold than a top-end goal for adult fitness. Here’s what Outside Magazine had to say about the study:

The researchers analyzed data from 17,088 participants in the UK Biobank, a large biomedical dataset and research resource, between 2013 and 2015. Study participants, with an average age of 57, wore an activity tracker on their wrist for seven consecutive days to record their normal activity levels.

During a follow-up of the participants after nearly eight years, 1,233 cardiovascular events (heart attack and stroke) were recorded. People, regardless of fitness level, who got 150 minutes of exercise each week had a nine percent reduction in cardiovascular event risk.

But to achieve substantial protection from cardiovascular events—defined as more than a 30 percent reduction in risk—the participants needed to log between 560 and 610 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise a week. This works out to about nine to ten hours of weekly exercise. Just 12 percent of people in the study hit those numbers.

Right. So, if we don’t measure up, are we just doomed? One of the researchers hastily responds no, every type and amount of movement counts.

[Senior researcher on the study] Ziheng Ning also says it’s important to avoid looking at exercise as a pass/fail threshold. “Instead, think of it as a continuum: more movement generally produces greater protection, and fitness level matters,” he says.

What are we to make of this? There have already been a bunch of criticisms and responses to the published study. Among the objections are these:

• the study collected data for only one week for participants, potentially not accounting for variation in exercise patterns
• the participant group was largely white and able-bodied, so not applicable to the general population
• this was an observational study, so no causation could be concluded

But the bigger objections were from health and fitness professionals who argued that the notion of “optimun” is relative to a baseline, and these vary for a lot of reasons and at different times in one’s life. Also, other studies show modest but significant health benefits for all sorts of physical activities, in all sorts of amounts and durations.

For my money, I don’t think activity or fitness is a continuum, where we slide forwards and backwards. Instead, I think we dip in and out, try on something for size, take a new sport out for a spin, chill out, loll about, dance around, and feel the occasional spring in our step. It’s about finding a cadence that works with the playlist our lives are running at the moment.

What’s your cadence this week/this month/this year/this decade/this life? I’d love to hear what you’re up to.

Hi readers– starting this month, I’ll be posting a research roundup– a selection of information about new studies out that may be of interest to us (or not), of relevance to us (or not), and whether we should pay attention to them (or not).

Usually I’ll be posting on the third Wednesday of the month, but this is a special Friday edition. Woo-hoo! So here goes…

We get this message from time to time, but luckily for us (well, me, at least), science is still saying that:

So what could this mean, exactly? Here’s some info from the HumeHealth Instagram post:

Large population studies have consistently found that lower-body strength is one of the strongest predictors of mortality ever identified in human health research.

And the relationship holds even when researchers control for:
• age
• body weight
• cardiovascular fitness
• physical activity

In other words: strength itself matters

We know that there are lots of simpler tests and functions that can serve as proxies for more complicated physiological tests and body functions; lower-body strength seems to be one of those.

We hear debates about intensity vs volume in exercise, and some recent reseearch suggests that intensity has more impact than volume. This 2026 article says so, in fact.

But, consistency matters, too. At least in resistance training, says this guy (who seems really happy, maybe because he got on the news?)

“The best resistance training program is the one you’ll actually stick with,” says Stuart Phillips, distinguished professor in the Department of Kinesiology and an author on the Position Stand. “Training all major muscle groups at least twice a week matters far more than chasing the idea of a ‘perfect’ or complex training plan. Whether it’s barbells, bands, or bodyweight, consistency and effort drive results.”

We already sort-of-knew that science believes that exercise helps our brains in a bunch of ways– maybe it helps stave off cognitive decline, boost memory and reasoning, and loads of other things. You can read a CDC overview about brain benefits of exercise if you want a deeper dive.

But what about the other way around?

In a recently published study, researchers found a connection between a group of neurons in the hypothalamus and capacity for boosting physical endurance in workouts over time.

IN MICE.

What? Well, here are some of the details:

[Researchers] worked with mice that underwent a rigorous exercise training program. They ran five days a week on a [teeny] tiny treadmill, with a single weekly long run that increased in speed. This training significantly raised their endurance, which peaked about three weeks into the program.

The researchers found that some SF1-producing neurons had an uptick in activity. As the training program continued, these neurons became increasingly active, seemingly forming a kind of “memory” of past exercise.

When these neurons were blocked from firing in mice after their exercise programs, their endurance capacity did not rise. Taking the opposite tack, artificially increasing the firing of SF1-producing neurons after their exercise programs led to continued endurance improvement even at the three-week mark, when it typically plateaued in mice with normal SF1-neuron firing rates.

Apparently the brain does something. And the brain stuff happens as the mouse is on the teeny-tiny treadmill. That’s all I got.

All this is very well and good, BUT: is anyone actually lacing up the sneaks and getting out there? Turns out, yes.

A CDC report released April 7 finds that nearly half of all US adults get the recommended level of physical activity. Here are some details:

• In 2024, 47.2% of adults age 18 and older met the federal guidelines for aerobic physical activity, with men being more likely to meet the guidelines (52.3%) than women (42.4%).
• The prevalence of meeting the federal guidelines for aerobic physical activity increased with increasing education level.
• Adults living in the West were more likely to meet the federal guidelines for aerobic physical activity compared with those in other regions.
• Aerobic physical activity was higher among adults without disabilities (49.8%), those with healthy weight (54.8%), and those with excellent or very good health (57.8%).

This is good news, as it shows an uptick in levels of physical activity, which (as we know) is good for a lot of things. Now, the fact that prevalence was lower among higher-weight folks and adults with disabilities shows (in my view) that we need more programs and more access and fewer structural barriers to physical activity for all of us. Don’t you agree?

That’s it on the blurbs for now. See you all next month. If you have a request for comments or blurbs on any new research you come across, post it on our social media pages or add a comment down below.

News flash: some recent studies out this month strongly suggest that physical activity is beneficially for health.

Now that you’ve had some time to get used to this new-new fact, here are a couple of studies with not-surprising results about fitness and health.

Strength training before endurance training confers more benefits (IN MEN).

A study of 45 young men found small changes in bone health, body composition and overall physical fitness by switching up the order of strength training and endurance training (lifting weights first, then running).

As Miss Manners likes to say, how nice for them.

Small changes in physical activity make a big difference in overall mortality-risk (when you’re looking at the population-level).

Again, the messages here are clear: small increases in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and 30-60-minutes decreases in sedentary time daily reduce mortality risk from 3% (cutting sedentary time) to up to 10% (increasing physical activity by 10 minutes a day in certain subpopulations– it’s a little complicated here). But this is the bird’s eye view, meaning this holds for big populations and not at the individual level. You can peruse the actual study here (in your copious free time, but maybe stand up while doing it…)

Stay tuned for more breaking news at Fit is a Feminist Issue!