Baby Boomers: Drop and gimme 20

December 11, 7:20 AMBaby Boomer ExaminerPaul Briand

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If you're a Baby Boomer chances are pretty good you're getting the correct amount of exercise suggested by the government.

A recent article in WebMD.com looked at a Centers for Disease Control analysis of how various age groups do against the 2008 exercise guidelines from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It compared those statistics against some older HHS guidelines for how much exercise we should get.

Baby Boomers are doing better keeping up with the new guidelines than they did with the older guidelines. Broken down by age:

Age 45 to 54 -- 65.2 percent exercise to the new guideline levels vs. 47.6 percent who got enough exercise according to the older standards,

Age 55 to 64 -- 60 percent exercise to the new standards vs. 45.2 percent who met the old standards.

What's the difference between the two? As explained by WebMD:

Newer guidelines include ...
150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity five days a week, or
75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity three days a week, or
An "equivalent" combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity physical activity.

The older guidelines include ...
30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity five days a week, or
20 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity three days a week.

(Moderate physical activity causes an increase in breathing or heart rate, such as brisk walking.Vigorous physical activities cause large increases in breathing or heart rate, like running.)

Baby Boomers are better able to meet the new standards because, basically, they're easier. Rather than exercise 30 minutes moderately or 20 minutes vigorously five days a week, the newer standards suggest you can break up the activity throughout the week and you can combine moderate and vigorous physical activities the same day at the gym or wherever.

In general across all age groups, according to the WebMD analysis:

• Men get more exercise than women,
• Young adults get much more exercise than seniors,
• White non-Hispanics get the most exercise and black non-Hispanics get the least,
• Westerners get the most exercise and Southerners get the least,
• Overweight people get nearly as much exercise as normal-weight people,
• College graduates get the most exercise and those who didn't finish high school get the least.