Beating the spread
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From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.
People commonly gain weight in middle age. But researchers say staying active starting in young adulthood can help to control middle age spread. At Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Dr. Arlene Hankinson saw this in data on more than 3,500 people followed for more than 20 years, starting when they were 18 to 30 years old. Dr. Hankinson compared high and low activity levels:
``Particularly in women, maintaining this higher activity was associated with gaining less weight.'' (6 seconds)
Higher activity levels amounted to 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a week - or about 30 minutes five days a week.
The study in the Journal of the American Medical Association was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Learn more at hhs.gov.