Research

Hormonal

Short-term (5-week) exercise interventions, whether HIIT or MVCT, significantly reduce serum testosterone and estradiol levels in obese young women, but do not significantly alter blood lipid profiles (TC, LDL, TG, HDL).

If you are an obese young woman, 5 weeks of exercise (HIIT or continuous) will likely lower your sex hormones (testosterone and estradiol), which may help with hormonal balance. However, do not expect your cholesterol or triglycerides to improve in just 5 weeks; you likely need to exercise for longer or burn more total calories per week to see changes in blood lipids.

GoodSupportsMEDIUM confidence
For both conditions, exercise training led to a decline in resting testosterone and estradiol levels, but had no significant effect on blood lipids.
Zhaowei Kong et al. · PLoS ONE · 2016

Why this rating

RCT design, though small sample size.

Source

Comparison of High-Intensity Interval Training and Moderate-to-Vigorous Continuous Training for Cardiometabolic Health and Exercise Enjoyment in Obese Young Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Zhaowei Kong et al. · PLoS ONE · 2016

DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0158589

rct · n=31Cited 186×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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