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Healthy eating activity is no good without physical activity

As the old saying goes…‘You are what you eat’. But how true is this? Well, probably most of
you reading this will think the resounding answer is yes.

But hold on a moment. No matter how healthily we eat, one factor remains so influential, that
without it the whole purposefulness of a prudent and healthful diet is inconsequential. Just a
look into the national newspapers this morning (13th May 2011) we see evidence of the
negative health impact of physical inactivity, especially on infants and adolescents. Children
as young as nine or ten are displaying the tell-tell signs of future heart disease.

It seems that just as our body needs food, so too does it need exercise, and lots of it. Emma
Little, science editor for The Sun newspaper, reports on the study carried out by a team in
Malmoa Sweden, where scientists using a sample of 300 nine to ten year olds found a clear
association between physical activity and cardiovascular disease risk factors in children. The
team used blood samples and ECG monitoring techniques as part of their toolkit, and fitted
accelerometers – a fancy type of pedometer – to record activity levels in the group.

Natasha Stewart, of the British Heart Foundation, gave her view of the findings aside the
story:

“the study reinforces the need to incorporate the recommended target of sixty minutes
physical activity into children’s daily lives. It has been shown it can prevent them from
developing disease later in life as well as improving their concentration at school, their
overall mental health and well-being“.

Does this then mean that unless we exercise for hours every day, from the day we begin to
walk, right up until the day we’re too old to, mean heart disease is a nigh on certainty? I think
this is quite unlikely. However, some regular exercise - as in at least an hour or two a day
from infancy, to 30 minutes a day throughout adulthood – is probably enough to keep the
risks of heart disease and other lifestyle diseases at bay. That is, so long, as other risk factors
are not in the lifestyle mix: cigarettes, drugs, and overuse of alcohol.

Other questions arise though. What is regular exercise? What does regular actually mean in
this sense? What is the medical or health professionals’ definition of exercise? What’s the
difference between exercise and physical activity? It seems the solutions to reducing risk
factors for heart disease raise (where exercise is concerned), raise even more questions.

Well, as you might guess, there are several definitions for each of the terms above, but in the
health and sports medicine fraternity they have managed to agree on more simple and
meaningful definitions. Below are from the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM),
one of the leading international authorities on health and fitness.

Physical activity or PA: Bodily movement that is produced by the contraction of skeletal
muscle that substantially increases energy expenditure.
Exercise: A type of physical activity is defined as: planned, structured, and repetitive bodily
movement done to improve or maintain one or more components of physical fitness
(American College of Sports Medicine, 2009).

So there you go. You’re probably a little more informed of the differences between exercise
and physical activity (PA), but I bet there’s now another question. I mean, the definition of
PA is straight forward right? But, if you don’t know what fitness is medically defined as, how
do you know what exercise is? Well, alas, dear friends, there’s also a medical definition for
that too!

Fitness or Physical fitness: A set of attributes that people possess or achieve that relates to
the ability to perform physical activity, and is comprised of skill related, health related,
physical components (American College of Sports Medicine, 2009).

Okay. We now know what PA, exercise and fitness is. We know we need to be physically
active to reduce our odds of heart disease in the future, and we must carry out this PA as in
the exercise sense: structured and planned, and repetitively. Right…so what does all this
mean?

Most people who are pretty inactive and have jobs where tapping a keyboard is the mostr
strenuous thing they will do all day (that pretty much sums me up) are among the population
– as well as the kids – where this and similar health messages are targeted. However, I could
confidently wager 50 pence right now that 98% of that target population do not know, or
have never heard of the recommended minimum levels of PA, as set out by the US
Department of Health and Human Services (1996). This report called Physical Activity and
Health: A Report of the Surgeon General, is quite extensive but basically it states that:

“Significant health benefits can be obtained by including a moderate amount of physical


activity (e.g. 30 minutes of brisk walking or raking leaves, 15 minutes of running, or 45
minutes of volleyball) on most, if not, all days of the week…Additional benefits can be gained
through greater amounts of PA”.

It is incredible to think that in this day-and-age more and more people do nothing more
strenuous than climbing their own staircase – if they have one - a few times day. One middle-
aged friend of mine told me that the last time he broke into a sweat was when he was trying
to overcome the reluctance of constipation.

That reminds me. I read somewhere about a study which showed that straining on the kaazi
can give you a stroke…

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