First, let’s define the term: for our purposes today (and indeed, for the science we will discuss), a “weekend warrior” is someone who gets in 150 minutes or more of moderate to vigorous exercise in just one or two sessions per week.

Some more parameters for our discussion today:

• a “regularly active” person also does 150 minutes or more of moderate to vigorous exercise, but spread over three or more sessions
• an “inactive” person is someone who does under 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per week.

You can probably guess already that the “inactive” person is going to be less healthy, and if you guessed that, then you guessed correctly.

But, what about the other two?

Head to head

Researchers (Dr. Zhiyuan Wu et al.) looked at 51,650 US adults with type 2 diabetes, found that both weekend warrior and regular exercise patterns (per the above definitions) reduced risk of death.

Compared to inactive people…

• weekend warriors had a 21% lower all-cause mortality risk
• regularly active people had a 17% lower all-cause mortality risk

Not only that, but when we look at cardiovascular mortality specifically, the gap widens, and…

• weekend warriors had a 33% lower cardiovascular death risk
• regularly active people had a 19% lower cardiovascular death risk

You can read the paper in full, here: Association of Weekend Warrior and Other Physical Activity Patterns With Mortality Among Adults With Diabetes: A Cohort Study

Why does this happen? What happened to advice such as that from The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, & Move More?

It’s unclear, but the researchers hypothesize that weekend activities may be longer, more social, outdoors, or higher intensity compared with weekday gym workouts—all of which can make a difference.

We at 10almonds would also not that the limitations listed in the paper,

❝Physical activity was self-reported and assessed at a single time point❞

…may play a part too. The kind of person who spends their weekends mountain-biking may well say “No, I don’t really do any exercise in the rest of the week” because, comparatively to the weekend, they’re not—even if in fact, due in part to their extra fitness, they’re quite possibly moving more than their non-weekend-warrioring counterparts who, not having the weekend of mountain-biking to point to, start totting up all the other things they do during the week, that the weekend warriors also did but left unmentioned as superfluous. But this too is just a hypothesis, to be clear.

What is clear, and is not hypothetical, is that both exercise patterns significantly reduce all-cause mortality.

In short, it is best to go with which ever works for you and your preferred lifestyle, because ultimately, the best exercise is the exercise that you’ll actually do.

For example:

• How Useful Is “Exercise Snacking”, Really? ← for light bites
• How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body) ← for getting intense

Want to learn more?

If you don’t love organized, intentional workouts, then consider:

No-Exercise Exercise! ← for how to get in a lot of exercise without it feeling like it

Enjoy!

It’s that time of year, and flu is on the rise. So is COVID, so is RSV, and so are various other infectious pathogens.

See for example: COVID, flu, RSV: how these common viruses are tracking this winter, and how to protect yourself ← this is news from Australia, which is of more relevance than one might think when it comes to those of us in the Northern hemisphere, as Australia’s flu season being 6 months ahead of ours can give a good indicator of how things are going to go for us when our own winter hits.

^{Note for any confused: due to axial tilt, seasons in the two hemispheres are mirrored. So while you’re probably familiar with the seasons being tied to specific calendar months and popular media (centred around N. American and European experiences) can make that seem very one-sided, it’s important to remember that June, July, and August are winter months in the Southern hemisphere, and December, January, and February are summer months.}

Which brings us to our main topic today…

It’s about time!

There’s a lot that can be done to improve one’s chances against the flu et al., and we’ve written about that from time to time before, for example:

Why Some People Get Sick More (And How To Not Be One Of Them) ← including some very important things that many people don’t know!

But more recently, researchers (Dr. Martina Towers et al.) have found that a person’s underlying circadian rhythm can directly influence how well the body responds to flu infection (and, presumably, other infections too, but this was about influenza A.

This is not too surprising, because circadian rhythms regulate biological processes in individual organs and cells, and external cues—especially light and mealtimes—help synchronize these clocks, and thus play a part in regulating immune response.

You may be wondering: why does the body care what time it is when it comes to fighting an infection? Isn’t a flu infection casus belli for total war, and thus around-the-clock wave after wave of immune defense deployments?

And yes, it is. But consider: we’ve previously used the example of firefighters, when talking about acute vs chronic inflammation (we’ll link that article at the bottom of this section, for your references). That the problem with chronic inflammation is that the firefighters are overworked and exhausted after responding to a bajillion false alarms or trivial things that were not really the business of the fire service, so that when an actual fire breaks out, they’re not in good shape to combat it.

Let us add to this metaphor a little, and ask the question: what happens if all the firefighters are confused about what time it is? Will they coordinate well together, show up to shift on time, get a good night’s sleep after a day’s work, and so forth? No, there will be big gaps in the service; there will be times when there are too many firefighters trying to crowd into one place, and times when there’s a nobody around to answer the calls.

So it is with your immune system too.

Dr. Towers and her team tested this, and in so doing, showed how disrupting normal lighting patterns during a critical window removed the usual time-of-day protections (i.e., that immune response is usually better in the morning, for example) and produced an abnormal immune response, including excess inflammatory cells in the lungs. They also found that keeping a rhythmic meal schedule at least somewhat reduced the harm caused by disrupted light cues. Thus, it’s clear that both light/dark and appropriate regular mealtimes are important for this kind of regulation, and that while they work best if you have everything correct, getting one aspect correct (e.g. just the dark/light, or just the meal schedule) is already better than nothing.

You can read the paper in full, here: Effect of external cues on clock-driven protection from influenza A infection

This is also consistent, of course, with the generally good advice of “try to get good sleep”, which was item #1 in a previous main feature of ours:

Beyond Supplements: The Real Immune-Boosters!

And see also, for that matter: What Harm Can One Sleepless Night Do? ← this is about how bad sleep ruins immune response, and is where we used to firefighters metaphor previously

In summary…

If you want to be able to fight the flu, then you need to take care of your circadian rhythm. For more on that, see:

The Circadian Rhythm: Far More Than Most People Know

…and:

The Other Circadian Rhythms

Want to learn more?

Check out:

The Pathogens That Came In From The Cold: The Cold Truth About Respiratory Infections

Take care!