Walking at a brisk 50 minutes a week reduces mortality in inactive people for decades | Health and wellness

Approximately 70% of people who visit a GP in Spain do not reach the minimum recommended healthy activity levels: 150 minutes per week that can be exceeded by brisk walking 25 minutes per day, dancing during the same time, or adding the minutes in matches, tennis or Exercise. The mortality rate for active people is reduced between 30% and 60% compared to those who do not exercise, and exercise reduces the incidence of almost all diseases to a greater or lesser extent. The benefits are clear and the evidence accumulated is enormous, but sometimes circumstances force us to keep doing things that don’t work for us.

to measure accurately The benefits of prescribing exercise as medicine To see what amounts of benefits were observed, a team led by the Basque Health Services Primary Care Research Unit Bizkaia followed 3,357 inactive patients from 11 Spanish primary care centers for 15 years. your search results, posted in the magazine British Journal of General PracticeThose who reached the minimum recommendations, 150 minutes per week of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, had a mortality rate of about 50% lower than those who remained inactive. Furthermore, 20% of the deaths that occurred in the group observed during the study would not have occurred if all inactive patients had complied with the recommendations.

Perhaps most important, especially for people over 40 without any exercise at all, is that the benefits of movement, while greater when they exceed recommended levels, begin to appear in very small changes, well below the levels normally considered minimal to enjoy the benefits. the exercise. With an increase of 50 minutes of moderate activity per week, a 31% decrease in mortality was recorded.

“This study exemplifies the type of patients primary care physicians encounter in their daily activities,” explains Gonzalo Grandis, chief of Biscay’s Primary Care Research Unit and study leader. “One of the doubts that health professionals face when they see people who have experienced decades of inactivity, who are in very poor physical condition, who are obese, and who are often exposed to chronic diseases Like diabetes or osteoporosis is whether it is worth recommending a physical activity plan and finding a way to motivate them,” Grands continues. “These findings show that even for those professionals who have many time constraints and need to prioritize, and for these patients, For those who may not trust the possibility of change, the results are starting to show quite a bit.”

The next step for Grands and the professionals working on these studies was to develop strategies so that professionals could suggest this type of medical intervention through physical activity. “We want to implement physical activity as a standard treatment for people with chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer or diabetes, but any change in clinical practice has tremendous inertia. There are professionals who do not have the training needed to develop a plan for physical activity, but it will be necessary to reorganize public health promotion within societies.”

Montserrat RomagueraFamily doctor, sports and author My doctor sends me for a walkIt is a book on the importance of exercise for health, and agrees on the need for training so that physical activity is not the last factor doctors consider and until the prescription for physical exercise is appropriate. Explains Romaguera, a member of Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine. But, in addition, he maintains that physical activity is a transverse thing to do with it How does society think?.

“Children and adults are addicted to screens and a lot of people live in places where there are no green spaces or hard to exercise,” he says. “In many European countries, people go to work by bike, and in doing so, mixed with very aggressive traffic, can put you at risk,” Romaguera explains. Spain is the second European country to suffer from childhood obesity, after only Malta. Changes must begin School plans, where physical education is more sports-oriented than exercise That we will do all our lives, but we must also facilitate sports for young people, open school playgrounds on weekends, or create more bike lanes to facilitate the use of this mode of transportation,” he continues.Cities should change with physical exercise in mindWhich, as studies like the one just published show, is an investment in mental and physical health,” he asserts.

For Isabel Egochea, of the Spanish Association of General Practitioners and Family Physicians, studies like this show a need to influence the importance of exercise with patients. We know that only medical advice [que le da un profesional] For a person who comes to counseling, and simply recommends that they stop smoking, it has an important effect. When seeing such results, we should frequently include advice to exercise, even if it is low and does not reach the figures recommended by international guidelines,” he adds. Despite the time constraints of primary care physicians, Igochia remembers that although not much is available From the time at each consultation, family physicians, unlike hospital physicians, “see the patient more than once and can follow up and influence their behavior,” and can rely on nursing “who is of great importance in patient education.” He concludes that “exercise”It must be a prescriptionAs with other medicines, which are adapted to each person’s circumstances, because even if we eliminate a sedentary lifestyle, we will benefit the patient.”

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