{"id":28172,"date":"2016-11-22T23:50:35","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T23:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/en.bornomalanews.com\/?p=28172"},"modified":"2016-11-22T23:50:35","modified_gmt":"2016-11-22T23:50:35","slug":"daily-dose-of-activity-to-lower-chronic-disease-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.bornomalanews.com\/?p=28172","title":{"rendered":"Daily dose of activity to lower chronic disease risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"physical-activities1\"The daily dose of activity needed to lower the risk of diabetes, stroke and heart disease by at least 20 per cent is several times the minimum recommended by the World Health Organization, researchers said yesterday, reports AFP from Paris.<\/p>\n

The same applies to breast and bowel cancer, they reported in a study reviewing 35 years of research on the link between physical exertion\u2014whether gardening or long-distance running\u2014and five chronic diseases.<\/p>\n

The benefits of exercise are well known and beyond dispute.<\/p>\n

Most health authorities issue guidelines on the bare minimum required to help ward off numerous ailments made worse by a sedentary lifestyle.<\/p>\n

But despite a mountain of research, \u201cwe still do not definitively know how much the type and quantity of physical activity reduces the risk of common conditions,\u201d a team of scientists led by Hmwe Kyu of the Institue for Health Metrics at the University of Washington in Seattle said in a statement.<\/p>\n

One problem has been finding a unit of measure that can be applied to actions as varied as walking one\u2019s dog, jumping rope, or having sex. \u00a0Enter the MET, or \u201cmetabolic equivalent of tasks\u201d, a concept developed in the 1990s and adopted more recently by the WHO.<\/p>\n

Metabolism is the conversion of food and drink into energy. When we are at rest\u2014watching television, for example\u2014we have a\u00a0metabolic rate of \u201cone\u201d. Using this as a baseline, scientists assign values to different activities depending on how much energy they consume. Strolling at a leisurely pace, for example, burns up twice the energy as sitting still, which gives it a value of MET 2. Vigorous running is a MET 8 activity.<\/p>\n

This scale makes it possible to compare the two: 10 minutes of running is the equivalent of 40 minutes of walking, and both have a value of \u201c80 MET minutes\u201d\u2014the amount of energy one would consume while watching a couple of episodes of Game of Thrones.
\nCanvassing nearly 200 studies in half a dozen countries\u2014including the United States, China, India and South Africa\u2014the researchers found that sharp reductions in disease risk required at least 3,000 to 4,000 of these \u201cMET minutes\u201d per week.<\/p>\n

Compared to a couch-potato existence, that level of physical exertion cut the risk of diabetes and breast cancer by more than 20 percent, they reported. For colon cancer, heart disease and stroke, the risk fell by more than a quarter. But at the level recommended by the WHO \u2014 600 MET minutes\u2014there was hardly any impact at all, according to the study, published in the BMJ.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who achieve total physical activity levels several times higher than the current recommended minimum level have a significant reduction in the risk of the five diseases studies,\u201d it concluded. The additional benefits of even more exercise or exertion dropped off quickly above that threshold, they added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis study represents an advance in the handling of disparate data on a lifestyle factor that has considerable importance for the prevention of chronic diseases,\u201d said Philippe Autier, a professor the International Prevention Research Institute in Lyon, commenting on the study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The daily dose of activity needed to lower the risk of diabetes, stroke and heart disease by at least 20 per cent is several times the minimum recommended by the World Health Organization, researchers said yesterday, reports AFP from Paris. The same applies to breast and bowel cancer, they reported in a study reviewing 35 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":28173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n