For decades, we've been told that the more exercise you get, the better off you'll be. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, recommends at least two and a half hours of moderate-intensity exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, making it clear that "more time equals more health benefits."
But less may be more, according to a study just published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. In fact, those who engage in light exercise may actually live longer than those who run longest, hardest, and most often.
So says Peter Schnohr at the Copenhagen City Heart Study, a long-running survey of the habits and health of residents of the Danish capital city. Since the 1970s, the study has reported time and again on the health benefits of jogging and other sorts of exercise. In a recent analysis, however, Schnohr and his team found that athletes who ran more than four hours a week, more than three times a week, or at a fast pace "appeared to lose many of the longevity benefits noted with [a] less strenuous dose of jogging," Schnohr writes.