Effects of Daily Physical Activity and Habitual Physical Exercise on Health and Lifestyle

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the effects of physical activities, including daily physical activity and habitual physical exercise, on health and lifestyle and to seek the ways of promotion of health care. Five hundred male employees, aged 20 to 55 years old, were investigated for their health and lifestyle, and 259 of them were subject to examinations of serum lipids. The major findings were as follows. 1. Habitual physical exercise showed more effective results than daily physical activity, in terms of self-care for health, balance of food intake, subjective feel on health condition, increase in HDL cholesterol and decrease in an atherogenic index. Also found were a negative association between exercise duration and atherogenic index and a positive association between exercise intensity and subjective feel on health condition. 2. Increase of daily physical activity tended to trigger increase in the number of health complaints and decrease in frequency of breakfast taken but tended to decrease total cholesterol and triglyceride. When the physical activities were broken down, decrease of health complaints was related to decrease of sedentary activity and increases of walking and sleeping. It was thus suggested that grasp of physical activities by types, improvement of lifestyle such as the habit of taking breakfast and preparation of program for physical exercise played important roles in promotion of health care.