Friday, July 20, 2012

Keep up the good work!

Time to go for a jog: As many as one in 10 premature deaths worldwide is caused by a lack of exercise, a new study suggests.
Those findings may not come as much of a surprise — countless studies have linked physical inactivity to increased risk of developing diseases like obesity, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and many types of cancer — but the scope of how physical inactivity affects us is staggering.
If the world population increased physical activity by just 10 percent, there would be 533,000 fewer premature deaths annually, I-Min Lee of the Harvard Medical School and her colleagues estimate. And if physical activity increased by 25 percent, over 1.3 million premature deaths could be avoided, USA Today reported July 18.
Increasing activity doesn’t mean you have to become a gym nut, either. Small steps are just fine, Lee says.
“We may not be Olympians, but almost all of us can walk 15 to 30 minutes a day,” she notes.
The study appears online in The Lancet.

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