How much health benefit you get from physical exercise might depend on your gender, and your race, new research suggests.
The work is based on data from more than 15,000 middle-aged African American and Caucasian men and women who have been participating since the late 1980s in the large Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study.
According to a report in the Journal of Lipid Research, people who added about an hour of mild exercise per week or half an hour of moderate exercise had increased levels of heart-healthy HDL.
In the study, "mild exercise" included such activities as walking for pleasure, bowling, or weight lifting. "Moderate exercise" could have been a more strenuous activity such as basketball, hiking, or modern dance.
