BEIJING, May 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Ten minutes of exercise a day won't turn inactive overweight women into fashion models, but tests in the United States on overweight and obese women revealed even small amounts of exercise improved their fitness and toned them up enough to lower their overall risk of early death.

    The study is the first to reinforce using hard medical data what other studies have suggested ¡ª that exercise does not have to be an all-or-nothing venture, Dr. Timothy Church of Louisiana State University and colleagues said.

    "This information can be used to support future recommendations and should be encouraging to sedentary adults who find it difficult to find the time for 150 minutes of activity per week, let alone 60 minutes per day," the researchers wrote in their report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

    Church and colleagues studied 427 overweight women with high or borderline-high blood pressure who had an average age of 57.

    The volunteers were randomly assigned to continue their normal lives or to exercise 75 minutes a week, 135 minutes a week or 190 minutes a week.

    "The women in this study walked on treadmills and rode stationary cycles, but any activity of comparable energy expenditure would produce similar results," said Dr. Steven Blair of the University of South Carolina, who worked on the study.

    After six months, the women had not lost any weight on average and their blood pressure, as a group, had not changed.

    But all the women who had exercised were fitter, as measured by oxygen intake as they exercised. And their waists were smaller.

    (Agencies)