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J_art/Moment (via Getty Images)
(J_art/Moment via Getty Images)

A century ago, people threw medicine balls and did gymnastics to stay healthy. Then came hula hoops, vibrating belts, and aerobics. People sweated it out with Richard Simmons oldies and felt the fire up with Jane Fonda, then did some Latin-inspired cardio while dancing or partook in his high-intensity fitness program. Exercise cycling has boomed during the pandemic.

The way people exercise changes with each new trend, but the idea that physical activity is the key to good health is more than just a passing fad. The ancient Greeks, even Herodicus, the father of sports medicine, and Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, were convinced that exercise was key, but they disagreed on how intense exercise should be. It was.

That question will remain unanswered for thousands of years. And as science continues to evolve, the answer may change again.

What remains the same is that staying active can help in many ways, including lowering your risk of heart attack, stroke, dementia, and several types of cancer, improving your mental health, and potentially reversing type 2 diabetes. It means it has health benefits.

“There is abundant evidence that physical activity is associated with most health conditions,” said Dr. Bethany Baron Gibbs, chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at West Virginia University in Morgantown. “In fact, there are very few outcomes that physical activity does not improve.”

Engineering activities outside of our daily lives

Keeping moving didn’t have to be difficult. People did it because they had to.

“A hundred years ago, people’s lives were much harder, so they incorporated a lot of physical activity into their lives,” Gibbs says. Although car ownership was becoming more common, it was not yet the norm. Useful appliances such as washing machines, dehydrators, and vacuum cleaners were just beginning to appear on the market.

Harry Carr/Value Line/Getty Images Plus, via Getty Images
(Harry Carr/Valueline/Getty Images Plus via Getty Images)

“People had to walk to the store, and they had to do a lot of manual labor and farm work,” Gibbs said. “More activity was needed to sustain life. People were looking for ways to reduce activity. Now they need to bring physical activity back into their lives.”

As cars became more commonplace and electronics reduced the amount of physical labor people had to do, “we got to the point where we weren’t moving as much,” Gibbs said. By the 1950s, “some people weren’t active at all. Then it became clear that more active people might be healthier. But there was no data to support that. No one “It was an untapped area because we hadn’t thought about measuring physical activity,” he said. ”

Find the data to back up

Scottish epidemiologist Dr Gerry Morris was the first to investigate how physical activity is linked to heart health. He hypothesized that people with physically active jobs would have lower rates of heart disease than people who were inactive at work. To prove this, in the early 1950s he compared the heart disease and mortality rates of conductors and drivers of double-decker buses, trams and trolleys in London, and found that the mortality rate from heart disease among drivers who sat all day was discovered that it was twice that of the conductor. He was moving around.

Shortly after Morris published his findings, American epidemiologist Dr. Ralph Paffenberger Jr. discovered a way to measure how much exercise people were getting, revolutionizing the study of physical activity. brought about. He created a questionnaire that has proven reliable in assessing the association between physical activity levels and the development of various diseases such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, and longevity. .

This was a far cry from being able to pinpoint exactly how much or how hard a person should move (with the advent of wearable devices that track a person’s movements throughout the day, researchers eventually ) provided researchers with a starting point, Gibbs said.

“Self-report questionnaires aren’t perfect, but they can distinguish between highly active and less active people,” Gibbs says.

By the 1970s, the American Heart Association began encouraging increased physical activity to improve cardiovascular health, but evidence regarding the type and amount of activity needed to maintain cardiovascular health remains limited. What emerged was a series of large-scale epidemiological studies in the 1980s and 1990s. Achieve health benefits. A growing body of research shows that even moderate-intensity activity, such as walking or gardening, is effective, and a 1995 U.S. Surgeon General’s report recommended that people do 30 to 45 minutes of moderate-intensity activity every day. We encourage those who are already doing so. , to push myself further.

H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock /Contributor/Archive Photo (via Getty Images)
(H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Contributor/Archive photo via Getty Images)

However, the report noted that 60% of U.S. adults were unable to do so and 25% barely moved.

Guidelines appear

As researchers continued to study the issue over the next three decades, federal guidelines for how much and how often people move evolved, reflecting a growing understanding of how physical activity affects health and longevity. I’ve done it.

In 2007, the American College of Sports Medicine, in collaboration with the American Medical Association and the U.S. Surgeon General, launched a campaign called Exercise is Medicine, urging people to commit to 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise each week.

Current federal guidelines supported by the AHA continue to promote a minimum goal of 150 minutes. However, they reflect additional evidence that suggests people are now aiming for up to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise per week. Moderate-intensity strength strengthening was added as a twice-weekly goal, as well as balance and fall prevention training for older adults. It is recommended that the child perform at least one hour of moderate physical activity per day and three times a week of vigorous aerobic exercise.

The guidelines also reflect major new developments in our understanding of the importance of movement. This means that even small amounts of activity throughout the day can make a difference.

A 2022 JAMA Internal Medicine study showed that adding just 10 minutes of exercise per day could help you live longer. And growing evidence suggests that it’s not just how much people move, but how much they sit that matters. Currently, guidelines encourage prolonged sedentary behavior, a recommendation supported by research emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, which suggests that sedentary behavior should be avoided at least once every hour. , we know that even 5 minutes of physical activity can be beneficial.

“Get off the couch.”

“The big public health message is to just get off the couch,” said Dr. Damon Swift, an exercise physiologist and associate professor at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

“There’s a misconception that you need to be a marathoner to get health benefits from exercise,” he says. “But in reality, the benefits start much earlier than that. As you start getting off the couch, and as you move from a state of inactivity to a state of some activity, your risk decreases significantly. Even if you increase it to 300 minutes, you’ll still get the benefit.” You’ll get the most bang for your buck from your initial investment. ”

Gibbs said people are moving less than ever since the pandemic accelerated the shift to a virtual existence. According to federal guidelines, only one in four men and one in five women and adolescents currently do the recommended amount of aerobic or strength-building exercise.

“We have eliminated physical activity from our lives,” Gibbs says. “You can do all your shopping online, you can order food online, and if you want to stay stationary all day, you can. I really think there’s a tension between all the conveniences of life, and if we don’t address that, we’re going to end up not having physical activity as part of our lives at all.”

So at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what you do to stay active, whether you take a brisk walk, ride a stationary bike, or pull a Jane Fonda aerobics video off the shelf. said Swift. As long as you do something.

“What I encourage people to do is do what you want to do and what comes easily to you,” Gibbs said. “We don’t need more evidence about whether physical activity is good for us or for which types. More people need to do it.”

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