Movement for Health

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Original Editor - User Name Top Contributors - Cindy John-Chu, Oluwafikunayomi Wole-Bankole and Kim Jackson  

What is Health

A person is said to be in a state of health if they are able to express all of their distinct potentialities within their surroundings and are in good bodily, mental, social, and spiritual health. However, according to the World Health Organization “health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”  Good health goes beyond a fit physical body. It involves the wholeness of a human being, regarded as a composite of physical, emotional, intellectual, social, and other parts, where the interdependence of the many parts is acknowledged and accepted.

What Is Sedentary Lifestyle?

Sedentary behavior can be defined as any waking behavior that includes sitting for an extending period of time or leaning with an energy expenditure of 1.5 metabolic equivalent task (MET) or less. An increase in sedentary lifestyle leads to poorer disease outcomes. Sedentary behavior raises the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes mellitus (DM), hypertension (HTN), and all-cause mortality (breast, colon, colorectal, endometrial, and epithelial ovarian cancer).

What conditions can arise from physical inactivity or sedentary lifestyle

Physical inactivity is one of the major causes of death and it is therefore a major problem in this century. They are various conditions that can arise from sedentary lifestyle:

·        Obesity: The most issue that originates from sedentary lifestyle or physical inactivity is obesity. As at 2016, the world health organization (WHO) showed that the prevalence of obesity had tripled between the last four decades and a estimated two billion individuals were overweight and more than half of that population were obese. Obesity has a negative metabolic impact on insulin resistance, blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides. Obese individuals have a higher chance of developing diabetes and other metabolic disease than non-obese individuals. A study which focuses on abdominal obesity showed that physical inactivity among adolescents predicts that abdominal obesity would occur in adulthood. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce physical inactivity in younger individuals so as to prevent the risk of developing obesity.  

·        Stroke: Stroke is a global or focal arterial lesion with symptoms lasting for twenty-four hours or more which leads to lifelong impairments (10). Stroke is the leading cause of death and impairments; the total amount of stroke cases are inactivity which can lead to the formation of plagues in the arteries that carries blood to the brain and this can lead to stroke (11). Regular physical activity has been found out to be a preventive measure for the development of stroke (12).

·        Diabetes: Poor physical activity can lead to the risk of developing diabetes mellitus (13). Physical inactivity or sedentary lifestyle is a behavior that can lead to a risk of developing diabetes mellitus (14). Currently the total number of people in the world that suffer from diabetes is approximately 450 million and studies have shown that the disease is prevalent among obese, physically inactive individuals (15,16). Regardless of the intensity, the type, and the domain, physical inactivity can reduce the onset of diabetes mellitus (17–19). A study shows that as little as 2-weeks of physical inactivity can worsen the risk of developing diabetes (20).  It enhances energy and decreases adiposity which is leads to diabetes mellitus.

·        Hypertension: Hypertension is one of the leading causes of death and impairments (21). The hypertensive heart has a number of end organ effects, including compensatory increases in left ventricular wall thickness and mass, which serve as an independent predictor of severe cardiovascular events (22). Physical inactivity leads to hypertension (22) subsequently modifies cardiac output and total peripheral vascular resistance, which in turn affects blood pressure(4). It is more common among hypertensive individuals than non-hypertensive ones and it is a contributor to hypertension about office workers (23).  A prolonged period of inactivity lowers metabolic needs and systemic blood flow; it also affects insulin sensitivity and vascular function by activating the sympathetic nervous system, increases oxidative stress, and triggers a low-grade inflammatory cascade (24).

·        Cancer: Aside from the aforementioned conditions, it has been found out that sedentary lifestyle can also lead to a risk of developing certain cancers like colon, endometrial, and lung cancer (25). It also increases the risks of dying from cancer (26). Cancer can be prevented if certain lifestyle behavior such as physical inactivity can be modified (27). Evidences have shown that physical activity can reduces the risks of developing colon, breast, bladder, and gastric cancers although physical activity done in the sun can lead to an increased risk of developing melanoma (27). Other complications that can arise from sedentary lifestyle:

1.     Sedentary lifestyle increases plasma triglycerides and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol. It is known that lipoprotein lipase (LPL), a protein that interacts at the cellular level, lowers plasma HDL cholesterol levels while also having an impact on the prevalence of severe HTN, diabetes-induced dyslipidemia, aging-related metabolic disorders, metabolic syndrome, and coronary artery diseases. Additionally, physical inactivity reduces LPL activity. Physical inactivity also suppresses LPL activity in skeletal muscles and immediately flags a problem with lipid metabolism

2.     It also reduces bone mineral density. According to a study that had been conducted on healthy men and women, it showed that twelve weeks of bed rest decreased the mineral density of the lumbar spine, femoral neck, and greater trochanter by about 4% (28). Bed rest increases bone reabsorption makers and not bone formation markers.

3.     Chronic knee pain is associated with a long period of inactivity (4). The results of an investigation of the relationship between chronic knee pain and total daily inactive time suggested that people with longer sedentary times had a greater frequency of chronic knee pain (29).

Movement and Physical Activity.

What Is Movement?

Movement is the act or condition of moving the location or orientation of the body or a bodily part from one position to another. One of the key characteristics of living things is movement (30).

What Is Physical Activity?

Any movement of the body caused by the contraction of skeletal muscles that increases energy expenditure over resting metabolic rate is referred to as physical activity. Physical activity is distinguished by its modality, frequency, intensity, duration, and context of practice (31). Physical activity has a considerable and impactful role in healthy weight gain and weight loss (6) and it has been shown to be effective on the physical and mental health in individuals and for the prevention of the aforementioned conditions (32).

According to the most recent who recommendations on physical activity, individuals (18–64 years old) should engage in 150–300 minutes per week of moderate-intensity activity, 75–150 minutes per week of vigorous-intensity activity, or an equivalent combination of both (5).

Benefits Of Physical Activity or Movement

1.     It is has been proved that exercise can promote longevity and delays the development of several conditions including those mention above (33). Children and adults must be encouraged to engage in physical activity from an early age in order to grow healthily(32).

2.     The quality of life and possibly the lifespan of a diseased person will almost always be improved when physical activity and exercise are employed as part of the medical management strategy for secondary illness prevention (34).

3.     There is a reduction in the risk of dying when individuals engaged in physical activity regularly (35) which has been proven in a study that the risk of early death was lowest among people with the greatest baseline levels of physical fitness and those who sustained or increased their physical fitness over time (36).

4.     Training that involves bearing weight, particularly resistance exercise, seems to have the biggest impacts on bone mineral density. In addition, athletes who participated in high-impact sports typically had higher bone mineral density than athletes who participated in low-impact sports (37).

5.     Long-term aerobic exercise training maintains VO2max throughout old age.

6.      Exercise aids in the primary prevention of many common chronic diseases and is frequently a key component of the management of various disease processes (38).

7.      Primary osteoporosis prevention benefits greatly from exercise. Age-related bone loss is reduced by regular PA. Compared to low impact non-weight-bearing exercise, weight-bearing exercise—especially resistance exercise—increases bone density (38).

8.     Numerous varieties of depression, including dysthymic, seasonal, bipolar, post-natal, pre-menstrual, atypical, and severe depression, can be effectively treated with exercise. Exercise and psychiatric medication together improve the effectiveness of treatment compared to the same medications alone. (39).

Other benefits:

• improve muscular and cardio-respiratory fitness;
• improve bone and functional health;
• reduce the risk of hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, various types of cancer (including breast cancer and colon cancer), and depression;
• reduce the risk of falls as well as hip or vertebral fractures; and help maintain a healthy body weight. (40).

References

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