CBC Radio | Quirks & Quarks | Past Shows

CBC Radio | Quirks & Quarks | Past Shows: "Dr. I-Min Lee, a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health has studied people who pack all their exercise into one weekend binge. She discovered that if you have any risks for heart disease, being a weekend warrior is as bad as getting no exercise at all.

Most surprising is that exercise can have no effect at all on some people. Dr. Claude Bouchard, Executive Director of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, discovered early in his career that there's enormous variation in how people respond to cardiovascular exercise, with some not responding at all. His current research is aimed at discovering the genetic roots of this phenomenon. Dr. Eric Hoffman, Director of the Research Center for Genetic Medicine at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, has found a similar phenomenon with muscle. Both say, however, that there are health benefits with exercise, even if cardiovascular fitness and strength don't improve."