**2. Conclusions**

Despite the well-known benefits of exercise, most adults and many children lead relatively sedentary lifestyles and are not active enough to achieve the health benefits of exercise. Further, due to the stigma associated with RT (i.e. erroneous/unfounded issues related to safety and damage to growth plates), many children and adults fail to engage in RT as part of their overall health and prevention/management of CVD [83]. This is despite the accumulating and overwhelming evidence for health and CVD-protective effects of RT. Given its whole-body, health-promoting nature, the integrative responses to RT will continue to attract special interest as the notion of "exercise is medicine" continues its integration into clinical settings [6]. Given that RT has both direct and indirect effects on the mortality and morbidity of CVDs via its identified risk factors (e.g. hypertension, dyslipidemia, obesity and diabetes), health care professionals and health policy makers should incorporate RT advocacy in their daily clinical practice and public health policies.
