Why Should we want to be active? Specifically

There is a plethora of reasons on why we should engage in regular physical activity and/or exercise. Evidence supports a decreased risk of premature mortality and morbidity, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stroke, osteoporosis, Type II diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, 13 separate cancers (breast, bladder, rectal, head and neck, colon, myeloma, myeloid leukemia, endometrial, gastric cardia, kidney, lung, liver, esophageal adenocarcinoma), depression, falls, and increased functional health/cognitive functioning.  If already diagnosed with a chronic disease, exercise can be a great axillary treatment with a doctor’s approval (1).

Often times, the practical everyday motivation of sustaining exercise due to the benefit of disease prevention/delayed onset/management is not enough of a motivation because it is not as present or in the moment enough for people to ‘feel’ the benefit. One way to consider the practical benefit of activity/exercise is from a functional standpoint. A previous patient I worked with exemplifies the the in-the-moment functionality that exercise can benefit for us. The patient was very deconditioned and would be short of breath with moderate lower back pain after walking at her normal walking pace for 5min. After a couple months of training this particular patient was able to walk for over 15min at normal walking pace before feeling that same shortness of breath and lower back pain. How is this helpful? Now this patient can go to the store and does not have to stop as frequently or if this patient goes to the zoo with their family, they are more comfortable ambulating around the zoo.

Sometimes it is difficult to understand how exercise and/or activity is benefitting us because we are with ourselves all the time and may not ‘feel’ the benefit. Another past example was when I was interning in cardiac rehab, we had a phase III program, which meant that many of our patients continued to be active and exercise once they had graduated from phase II. I think of phase III cardiac rehab as a kind of medical grade fitness center. We had some patients who had continued in phase III for 5, 10, and even 15 years! I would go up to these patients and ask them what they thought they were getting out of this structured exercise routine they had regularly been engaging with (I knew physiologically what the benefit was, but I was curious their motivation/thoughts)? The patients would typically give me the same answer; ‘I don’t think this does anything for me. I come here because all my friends are here. This is a fun social atmosphere for me 2-3x a week.’ Now pretty frequently a patient would go on vacation, have an operation, etc. and would be missing for 2-4 weeks. Every time a patient would come back after being gone for a period of time they would always come up to me and say ‘It is so much harder for me to carry my shopping to the car’ or ‘I have to rest more frequently when attempting to walk through a store’. What would happen is these patients would decondition a bit and realize how much the exercise 2-3x a week was benefitting them, but their primary motivator for being so consistent with their exercise routine was not health driven; that health benefit was a consequence of being active. The real reason these patients continued to engage in their exercise routine so consistently was because of the social atmosphere; meaning they were having fun seeing their friends so consistently.

The takeaway from this article needs to be that it is extremely vital for our overall health and well-being to be active as we constantly hear but finding activity that we enjoy engaging in or at the very least we do not dread is the ultimate goal. I would expect and encourage our activity and exercise to change over time, but remaining active long term is what is vital. Sustainability is what should be on our mind from the moment we are considering engaging in any type of activity and/or exercise.



References

1.American College of Sports Medicine. ACSM’s Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription. 10th ed. Baltimore (MD): Wolters Kluwer; 2018.1 p.