Which type of exercise offers the best value? 'The Lancet' provides the answer

Everyone knows that exercise is beneficial to both physical and mental health, but the cost-effectiveness of different types of exercise is not the same. Many people don't really understand it.

For the same amount of exercise time and the same intensity, some types of exercise can better reduce mortality and reduce mental issues, while some exercise makes people exhausted but with limited effect.

So, what types of exercise are cost-effective, and which ones are really 'deadweight'?

Exercise can alleviate mental burden

This '' study is not small. The study's main researchers come from the University of Oxford and Yale University, with data samples from the CDC and other institutions.

When sampling, they concentrated mental burden and mental illness into the common mental problems of modern people, such as depression, stress, and emotional issues, and divided their severity into self-feeling problems and depression diagnosis.

To make the relationship between sports and mental health more direct, they calibrated many factors simultaneously when analyzing the data, including age, gender, BMI, race, income, marital status, education level, and so on.

In terms of exercise type, from the over 100,000 people, they identified 75 types of sports, to facilitate statistics, they divided these sports into 8 categories:

Popular team sports

Cycling

Aerobic or gymnastics

Running or jogging

Recreational sports or other

Winter sports or pool sports

Walking

Other unclassified

First, let's make one thing clear: for depression, stress, and other mental issues, their results show that no matter what type of exercise you choose, exercise is always better than no exercise –

In the total sample, the group that experienced the burden of time is, the left bar is the group that doesn't exercise at all, and the right blue bar is the group that exercises. It can be seen that as long as you exercise, your mental health condition will improve somewhat.

The group that was diagnosed with depression also benefits from exercise more than not exercising.

Which category does exercise rely on for mental health?

In the total group, the top three are:Team activities, cycling, and aerobic gymnastics –

In the depression-afflicted group, the top two remained the same, and the third changed to recreational sports or other –

Here we explain that Recreationalsports is translated as recreational sports, but it is essentially a low-intensity sports activity for fun (no need to score), it helps with depression treatment, basically refers to low-intensity just for fun basketball and football activities. From this point of view, it is understandable why it ranks higher than aerobic gymnastics, because collective activities have a help for depression.

These two bars at the bottom of the Household refer to the household income, which the researchers deliberately put at the end for comparison because they found that people with household income of $50,000 and household income of $15,000 had a burden of only about 10% more than the difference, while exercise, as shown, can easily exceed the effect of the money difference. The top three categories have a reduction of mental burden by more than 20%.

Overall, the authors believe that for the mental health of ordinary people, the most beneficial is team exercise, cycling, and aerobic gymnastics.

Exercise the body relies on which category?

We said above that it's about mental issues, let's talk about the physical issue.

For the body, what type of exercise is the most cost-effective? In fact, it's not much different from mental health –

In 2016, a study with 80,000 samples and a tracking time of 10 years was carried out in the UK, mainly to find the relationship between different types of sports and all-cause mortality.

First: striking movement

The results are shown in the above chart, the first is striking movement, including tennis, badminton, which also includes the first major category of ''

Its reduction of all-cause mortality is the most violent, decreasing by 47%, which is much higher than the second and third places

Second: swimming

Third: aerobic exercise

And this study shows that running contributes less to reducing all-cause mortality, only decreasing by 13% compared to the group that doesn't exercise. However, cycling has a lower effect, decreasing by 10%.

It's not difficult to see that striking sports and aerobic gymnastics are the most beneficial for mental and physical health

Swimming is good for physical exercise, and the mental burden and mental issues are relatively weak. Cycling, conversely, benefits mental health and physical exercise are relatively behind –

How long is the most beneficial?

Many people think that the longer the exercise, the better, and excessive exercise is good. '' research found that this idea is wrong.

In terms of time length, the best exercise duration should be 45-60 minutes, less than 45 minutes, the effect is reduced, more than 60 minutes, there is no higher effect, and many will have negative effects –

As shown in the chart, only recreational sports have a yield reduction after 60 minutes (the yield is to reduce the curve, increase it is a mental burden), cycling can maintain a yield after 60 minutes, and other aerobic gymnastics, walking, running, etc., all have negative effects after 60 minutes.

In terms of frequency, you don't need to train every day, 3-5 times a week, and once a day has the highest yield –

Except for walking, which can be slightly higher, at most 6 days a week. All other sports have a negative effect if less than or more than 60 minutes.

So, to sum up, tennis, badminton, and aerobic gymnastics are best when exercised for 45-60 minutes, 3-5 times a week, and once a day has the highest yield.

However, it doesn't mean that everyone should immediately adjust to this position, if you are struggling to run every day, it's difficult to persevere, then you can try these types. Especially aerobic gymnastics, the requirements for venue and equipment are not high, easy to implement.

If you already have a favorite sport that can be persevered, you can refer to the recommended exercise volume, increase the existing yield.

If you are a fat guy..., you should first overcome the earth's gravity, and then start from the chair.

Author: Jiang Feibao

Image: Except for the author, all images are from ''

Editor: Wang Xing, Responsibility Editor: Tang Wenjia