Physical Inactivity: Your Ticking Time Bomb!

 

 

Physical inactivity is now the 4th biggest killer in our society surpassing obesity and only just behind cardiovascular disease, smoking and high glucose levels. Public health programs have attempted to increase physical activity participation by encouraging people to fulfil the previously narrow national physical activity recommendations of 30 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous exercise. While this is a significant step in improving activity levels it doesn’t specifically address the basic principles of inactivity.

Research tells us that sedentary behaviour or inactivity is seriously hazardous to health and is a significant risk factor that is different from just not exercising, which makes it possible to meet the current exercise guidelines and still be sedentary.

It is becoming more apparent that the signals harming the body from inactivity are specific and distinct from not participating in formal moderate to vigorous exercise sessions. People require large amounts of activity throughout the day to maintain good health.

To address these new concerns the new Physical Activity recommendations have been modified for adults between 18-65 to now include:

• Do some activity is better than doing none. If you currently are doing no physical activity start by doing some and then gradually build up to the recommended amount.
• Be active on most, preferably all days of the week.
• Accumulate 150-300 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity or 75-150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activities each week.
• Do muscle strengthening exercises on at least two days.
• Minimise the amount of time spent in prolonged sitting
• Break up prolonged periods of sitting as often as possible

This presentation addresses the principles of inactivity and sedentary behaviour and introduces the new L.I.M.I.I.T paradigm as a means of quantifying the dose and prescription of physical activity required to meet these new generalised recommendations.