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“High-Risk Inactivity”
This title was used in the Washington Post Health Section
(3/26/02) to discuss an important study (3/14/02 New England
Journal of Medicine) on the consequences of an inactive
lifestyle to your overall health.
The study found the risk of death in the fittest patients was
about half that of the least fit. The Washington Post article
summarizes “while the fittest patients had the lowest risk of
death regardless of underlying condition, the biggest gain in
the protective benefit of exercise occurred at the other end of
the spectrum. When the least fit subjects stepped up their
physical activity, their relative risk of death dropped by a
higher proportion than any other group’s.” “Yet, physicians
rarely seriously recommend exercise as a therapy for patients
with elevated health risks.”
Sedentary Death Syndrome
The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports has
coined the phrase “Sedentary Death Syndrome” to categorize the
emerging entity of sedentary lifestyle-mediated disorders that
ultimately result in increased mortality.” “Weak skeletal
muscles, low bone density, hyperglycemia, glucosuria [sugar in
the urine], low serum HDL [low good cholesterol], obesity, low
physical endurance, and resting tachycardia [high resting heart
rate] are a set or group of symptoms that together characterize
Sedentary Death Syndrome.”
The council goes on to say that “30% of the deaths for coronary
heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and colon cancer would be
prevented by moderate-intensity physical activity that expended
1000kcal/wk” [1000 calories per week]. “The number of deaths
from sedentary living is two times greater that that from
microbial agents and also exceed all deaths from firearms,
illicit usage of drugs, sexually transmitted diseases, and
motor vehicle accidents. Thus, a major cause of death in the
US is sedentary living [highlights added]. In other words,
the sedentary death syndrome comprises one of the top three
causes of all-cause mortality in the US today….”
“Therefore, in the last 100 years, the leading causes of
death have dramatically shifted from the scourges of infectious
disease (in 1900), to tobacco, obesity, and Sedentary Death
Syndrome (in 2000), which in essence constitute the new scourge
for humanity.”
Studies published in 2000 and 2001 respectively show that
“82 % of coronary heart disease and 91% of type 2 diabetes
is caused by high-risk lifestyles. Thus, the corollary by
logical inference is that a large majority of such disease
are preventable by engaging in low-risk lifestyles. Low
risk behavior was defined as a combination of five variables:
BMI of less than 25 [to calculate your Body Mass Index see my
website homepage and click on announcement #7]; a diet high
in cereal fiber and polyunsaturated fat and low in trans fat
[partially hydrogenated oil] and glycemic load (which reflects
the effect of diet on the blood glucose level); engagement in
moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for at least half an
hour per day; no current smoking; and the consumption of an
average of at least half a drink of an alcoholic beverage
per day.”
Of all the council’s statements, the one I find most
significant is “preventing a chronic health condition in
the first place is more humane and produces less suffering
than secondary or tertiary treatment of full-blown over
disease. In other words, the practice of primary prevention
is a fundamental demonstration of the very essence of the
Hippocratic oath…. It is indeed ironic that practicing
primary prevention is considered basic common sense in
other inanimate aspects of our daily life, when we neglect
to do the same when it comes to our own personal health, a
most fragile entity. For example, is it not less damaging
and expensive for an automobile to undergo routine maintenance
such as oil changes rather than to undergo a complete engine
replacement after several years of neglect?” WOW! This
is the President’s Council talking, not me! PREVENTION–
WHAT A CONCEPT!
Age and exercise- "it is never too late to start exercising,"
says Jerome Fleg, who studies the health benefits of exercise
at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).
"There is no age that we have found where you can no longer reap the benefits
of physicial activity."
"It's not that you are too old to exercie, it is that you are too
old not to exercise," syas Walter Michael Bortz II, a
professor of medicine at Stanford University in California and a
70-year-old marathoner. "Fitness becomes a survival issue."
"Equally enlightening, given the growing number of overweight
and sedentary Amercian, is new research suggesting that most
of the physical changes chalked up to growing old - insulin
resistance, decreased lung function and elevated systolic blood
pressures - are not due to aging at all, but to inactivity."
Washington Post 4/23/02 "In It for the Long Run"
by Sally Squires
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EXERCISE - "HIGH RISK INACTIVITY"