After reading an article and viewing associated power points on the topic of viewing physical activity (PA) as a medicine. This topic is going to keep growing momentum and with the ever increasing reliance and acceptance of technology and societal factors us and the Gen 'Y's are going to have to make PA an absolute priority in our lives. Messages such as increasing fish oil consumption and green tea intake are great and getting through to more and more people. The PA message is just as important. The key figure delivering this message was Dr Karim Kahn an Aussie trained sports physician now an associate at The Uni of British Columbia in Vancouver.
What must be highlighted is PA is anything. There is an abundance of ways to increase physical activity. If you are a sales person you could get 60 minutes of increased activity a day by scheduling in an extra 10 minutes per appointment and parking 5 minutes walk away and trekking to and from 6 appointments. Very simplistic example from a very simple man I know (me). Dr Karim states in his message that PA could even be more beneficial to the brain than the heart. He also goes on to say cell function, cancer prevention, type II diabetes prevention, bone strength and health are all benefits of this PA poly-pill. And adding a bit of sarcastic humour to the equation he also states if those benefits don't interest you then how about a 60% reduced risk of erectile disfunction.
What really interested me was the fact that the find 30 minutes a day message bandied around these days is well short of the mark. Something I will be addressing personally in my own life is that 7 days a week we should be incorporating 60 minutes of PA. Because the complete genetic makeup of a cell evolved with a high componet of PA so the benefits of increasing PA would be
evolutionary. The US only introduced the 30 minutes a day message because they thought finding 60 would be too daunting!!! The truth hurts sometimes don't it.
To finish with Dr Kahn quoted a conclusion from a study conducted by Frank Booth in the Journal of Applied Physiology, 2002 titled,'Waging War on Physical Inactivity' that says, "with the possible exception of diet modification, we know of no single intervention with such great promise than physical exercise to reduce the risk of all chronic diseases simultaneously". I don't think I need to add much more to this except pass this message on to all of your friends, family and loved ones. Any assistance needed to help you integrate PA into your tight schedule I would love to help.
If you feel the need to read the power points from Dr Kahn's presentation go to the apaconferenceweek07.asn.au/ website and the link is:
website_pdfs/presentations/MPA/Fri%20AM/Khan-K.pdf
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