High-Intensity Exercise Good for Metabolic Syndrome

(July 10, 2008) - Hard training seems to help people with metabolic syndrome (Read about "Metabolic Syndrome") more than other exercise. In a small study, short, vigorous exercise appeared to reduce metabolic risk factors better than longer spells of moderate intensity exercise according to a report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Forty-six percent of metabolic syndrome patients who participated in a 4-month, intense aerobic interval training (AIT) program had fewer metabolic syndrome risk factors compared to 37 percent of patients following a moderate training plan.

Metabolic syndrome - estimated to affect 24 percent of the U.S. adult population - is a clustering of metabolic risk factors that increase your vulnerability to coronary heart disease, stroke, peripheral vascular diseases and other diseases related to plaque build-ups in artery walls. (Read about "Coronary Heart Disease" "Stroke" "Peripheral Arterial Disease" "Arteriosclerosis & Atherosclerosis")

To determine what kind of exercise works best against the metabolic syndrome, researchers divided 32 patients (average age 52) into three groups. One group used a high-intensity aerobic-interval training for four months. Another used a less-intense regimen called "moderate continuous-training" (CME). Another did not exercise.

Patients in both exercise groups lost roughly the same weight and waist circumference. Thus, AIT's ability to cause patients' hearts to beat faster - and thus absorb and use oxygen - seems to be why patients in this group became healthier than those in the CME group, researchers said.

Patients in the AIT group increased their ability to absorb oxygen by 35 percent, while those in the CME increased their ability to absorb oxygen by only 16 percent.

This group also outperform the CME group in several other key measures, including endothelial function, blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, fasting glucose, HDL cholesterol and mitochondrial biogenesis (the ability of cells to produce fuel for work).