Longer exercise bouts, less obesity risk

KINGSTON, Ontario, March 19 (UPI) -- Children who exercise in bouts of activity lasting five minutes or longer are less likely than others to become obese, Canadian researchers said.

Ian Janssen of Queen's University and graduate student Amy Mark analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey on 2,498 youth ages 8-17.

Sporadic (one to four minutes), short (five to nine minutes) and medium-to-long (10 minutes and longer) bouts of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity were measured using motion sensors.

Two-thirds of the physical activity measured in the young people took place in short, sporadic sessions that lasted less than five minutes.

"Even in 60-minute physical education classes or team practices, children are inactive for a large portion of the time and this would not necessarily count as sustained exercise," Janssen said in a statement. "When children engage in longer periods of sustained physical activity, there is a smaller likelihood that they will be overweight or obese."

The findings appear in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.