Exercise Is The `magic Bullet'
Newcastle Herald
Tuesday April 13, 2004
AFTER years of studying numerous nutritional and lifestyle factors, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health have come up with the single thing that comes close to a magic bullet in terms of strong and universal health benefits. And it's exercise.
Frank Hu, Associate Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard, says good nutrition is essential for health, but discoveries that were once very promising including antioxidant supplements have turned out not to be magic pills. Exercise is the one.
Exercise will help prevent heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity, and 12 kinds of cancer plus gallstones and diverticulitis. The Harvard research shows exercise will also improve strength and make bones stronger.
You'll grow new capillaries in your heart, your skeletal muscles, and your brain, improving blood flow and the delivery of oxygen and nutrients.
Your attention span will increase. If you have arthritis, your symptoms will improve.
Your blood volume will increase and you'll burn fats better. Even your immune system will be stimulated.
During the past 10 years, epidemiologists like Professor Hu have clearly demonstrated exercise's protective effects against many serious diseases.
Exercise can change virtually every tissue in the body because it works by many different pathways: metabolic, hormonal, neurological, and mechanical.
Fifty per cent of Australia's population fails to meet even the minimum government recommendation for daily exercise: 30 minutes of walking or its equivalent, accumulated in bouts as short as eight to 10 minutes.
While Australia likes to think of itself as a sporting nation focused on fitness, behind the striking media images of elite swimmers, Olympic Dream Teams and rugged footballers is the troubling reality of a generation of young people, many of whom are inactive, unfit and increasingly overweight.
Television, a major cause of sedentary behaviour in particular, has drawn the attention of public-health researchers at Harvard. In a landmark study that compared watching television to reading, sitting at a desk and driving, Professor Hu found television watching was far more likely to lead to obesity and diabetes than any of the other sedentary behaviours.
``When people watch television, they eat," he said. ``Plus, they tend to make bad food choices."
Television watchers eat more junk food and fast food. And when people watch television their metabolic rate (the rate at which energy is burned) drops lower than when they sit and read or work on a computer.
``That's because watching television is completely passive," said Professor Hu. ``It's almost like sleeping sit back and relax that's the message."
People who watch television also tend to spend a lot of time doing it, leading Professor Hu to dub television watching ``a major public health hazard".
As Australia approaches an overweight and obesity epidemic, it is time we all swallowed that ``magic bullet" and paid more attention to at least some form of regular exercise.
This article supplied by The Forum Sports and Aquatic Centre at The University of Newcastle, adapted from information supplied by Fitness Australia. Website: www.newcastle.edu.au/sport. Phone 49217001.
© 2004 Newcastle Herald