“Mens sana in corpore sana” used to say the ancient Latinos. And they were absolutely right. Several scientific studies have shown the importance of physical activity for the brain, diet, and so on. In addition, new research continues to reaffirm the impact of a sedentary lifestyle on life expectancy.
” Our study suggests that sedentary behavior is a risk factor for mortality .” This is how blunt Annemarie Koster and her colleagues were after conducting research on the impact of physical activity on people’s life expectancy. The study, echoed by Coca-Cola in its newsletter on nutrition and physical activity, analyzed almost 2,000 50-year-olds in the United States and verified what impact their habits had on their more or less premature death.
But this is by no means the only research carried out on the amount of calories ingested, healthy diets and the amount of calories to burn. According to a study carried out at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Girona, moderate physical activity for at least half an hour for 5 days a week, or even intense exercise for at least 20 minutes performed 3 times a week, reduces almost one the risk of mortality a third. Scientists at the University of Texas reached a similar result in a study published in The Lancet, in which they stated that “exercise at very low levels reduces deaths from any cause by 14 percent .”
So, if the benefits of physical activity and balanced and healthy diets are known, how can it be that we are becoming more and more sedentary? What has caused this change in behavior in society? As indicated by Dr. Rafael Urrialde, head of the Health and Nutrition area of Coca-Cola Iberia, during his speech at the XIV Nutrition Seminar “Controversies, Debates and Advances in Nutrition” (2013) organized by the Menéndez Pelayo International University, “ the substantial increase in sedentary lifestyle and physical inactivity is motivated by changes in the life habits of the population , both in eating patterns and physical activity, and the decrease in energy expenditure in daily life. We live in an environment that makes people inactive because, among other factors, new technologies contribute to making everything easier, moving around is less and less necessary and also leisure activities are increasingly sedentary ”.
And it is that, in reality, food and physical exercise are closely linked . As a team from Harvard University demonstrated, physical exercise increased sensitivity to certain signals in our body, such as satiety, and modified pleasure responses to food.
All of this translated into a healthier and more balanced diet. As Miguel Alonso Alonso, co-author of the study, explains, ” physical activity seems to have a facilitating function of eating behaviors aimed at following a healthy diet “. All of this has elevated sport from an exclusively leisure level to a medical stadium. In fact, according to Urrialde, “one of the public health tools with the greatest potential to curb the obesity epidemic is prevention through the regular practice of physical activity.”
