| "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The more you exercise, the fitter you will become, a study of postmenopausal women published in the Journal of the American Medical Association confirms. And even small increases in exercise have positive effects on fitness." "The findings "may be succinctly summarized for patients and clinicians as 'Even a little is good; more may be better!'" Dr. I-Min Lee, at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, writes in an accompanying editorial." "Poor cardiovascular fitness is, in itself, a "powerful" risk factor for an early death, study leader Dr. Timothy S. Church, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and colleagues note. While the amount of physical activity a person performs is a prime determinant of how fit he or she will be, few studies have taken a careful look at how different amounts of exercise might affect fitness levels, they add." "To investigate, Church and his team assigned 464 sedentary, overweight or obese, postmenopausal women to four different exercise expenditure levels for six months, based on the National Institutes of Health's recommendation of 30 minutes of moderate activity on most days of the week." "A control group performed no additional activity, while the other women exercised at 50, 100 or 150 percent of recommended levels. Study participants alternated training on recumbent exercise bikes and treadmills." "On average, women in the 50-percent group exercised 72 minutes a week; those in the 100-percent group were active for 136 minutes; and those in the 150-percent group worked out for 192 minutes weekly." "After six months, peak oxygen consumption rose 4.2 percent more in the 50-percent group than in the control group, while women in the 100-percent group showed a 6 percent increase in peak oxygen use. Among those in the 150-percent group, peak oxygen consumption increased by 8.2 percent." "Even women who
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