{"id":759392,"date":"2026-06-25T03:35:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T03:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/759392\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T03:35:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T03:35:22","slug":"its-good-to-break-a-sweat-but-dont-sweat-the-details-harvard-gazette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/759392\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s good to break a sweat, but don\u2019t sweat the details \u2014 Harvard Gazette"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your body doesn\u2019t care how you move, as long as you move.<\/p>\n

That was the message delivered Thursday by panelists at the Chan School in conversation about the benefits of staying active and the excesses of \u201cno pain, no gain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though studies of the health effects of physical activity are often conducted with a focus on specific exercises, Meagan Wasfy<\/a>, Harvard Medical School associate professor of medicine at Mass General, said that the development of wearable fitness monitors has enabled researchers to see the impact of a greater variety of activities. The results have been clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe heart \u2014 and also the whole body \u2014 doesn\u2019t know what shoes you have on your feet,\u201d said Wasfy, an MGH sports cardiologist and echocardiographer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe heart \u2014 and also the whole body \u2014 doesn\u2019t know what shoes you have on your feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meagan Wasfy<\/p>\n

Wasfy\u2019s co-panelists at the event, \u201cReframing Exercise,\u201d were Mia Sanchez, a marathoner who studied environmental health at the Chan School; Brooke Forde, an Olympic silver medal swimmer and project coordinator at the Chan School; and I-Min Lee<\/a>, a professor of epidemiology at the Chan School and of medicine at Harvard Medical School.<\/p>\n

Sanchez and Forde spoke about their transitions from competitive to casual exercise. One thing they learned? Exercise doesn\u2019t have to hurt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was able to stop and reflect on my \u2018why\u2019 of exercise and how I could find that balance,\u201d Sanchez said of an enforced pause due to a stress fracture. \u201cThen, moving on from college into graduate school, there wasn\u2019t as much time for that high-intensity training that I was used to for so long. But I was able to find love for not only running but other forms of exercise, like going outside and playing soccer or volleyball with my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mia<\/p>\n

Mia Sanchez (top left) Gretchen Reynolds, I-Min Lee, Brooke Forde (bottom left), and Meagan Wasfy.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Veasey Conway\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p>\n

For those looking to slim down, panelists said that staying active can help with weight maintenance, but that it\u2019s not, on its own, a great way to shed pounds. Even so, research has shown that among people with obesity, those who exercise are healthier than those who don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

For anyone starting an exercise regimen, physical activity is most beneficial when it is regular and habitual, Lee noted. Also, your hard-charging past won\u2019t save you today.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt appears that what you currently do is more important than what you did in the past,\u201d Lee said. \u201cHarvard athletes who play a lot of sports when they\u2019re in College but become couch potatoes actually don\u2019t do as well as people who did no sport in college but are currently physically active.\u201d<\/p>\n

Panelists endorsed the government\u2019s recommendation of 150 minutes of moderate physical activity per week as a good starting point for most people. Another popular guideline is 10,000 steps per day, which dates to a study done in the 1960s. Here, the group offered caveats.<\/p>\n

For older adults, they said, citing more recent data, the cardiovascular and cancer benefits start to taper at 6,000 steps. (Which doesn\u2019t mean you should stop: The social or psychological benefits may continue to mount.) For sedentary adults, health gains begin to accrue almost right away, even at 500 to 1,000 steps. For them, walking a half-hour or an hour provides significant benefit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s important is the total amount of human movement,\u201d Wasfy said. \u201cWhat\u2019s important for the health benefits is the total dose. The details don\u2019t matter quite as much.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your body doesn\u2019t care how you move, as long as you move. That was the message delivered Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":759393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[128,49,48,408,407,84,2376,994],"class_list":["post-759392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-aging","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-exercise","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-heart-health","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/759393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}