A quarter of adults do not do enough exercise, according to a study

A new study says that one in four adults in the world is not doing enough exercise, putting "more than 1.4 billion adults at risk of developing or aggravating diseases related to inactivity ".

The study, conducted by researchers from the World Health Organization (WHO) and published in the Lancet Global Health, found that 27.5% of people worldwide did not comply with the WHO guidelines for physical activity, 75 minutes of vigorous exercise or 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week. This represents a slight improvement over 2001, when the overall inactivity rate was 28.5%, but remains a problem that needs to be "urgently addressed" as exercise is one of the best ways to improve health and longevity. chronic disease.

The WHO study was based on data from 358 surveys conducted between 2001 and 2016, including 1.9 million people from 168 countries. Although more data are available for high-income countries than for low-income countries, the study group represents 96% of the world's population. Each survey asked participants how much physical activity they were doing through work, household chores, transportation and recreation.

The researchers found huge geographical variations in activity levels, ranging from just 5.5% of non-compliant people in Uganda to 67% in Kuwait. These countries were part of a larger trend: high-income countries tended to follow fewer exercises than low-income countries, partly because work and transport were mostly sedentary in the developed areas. -industrialized countries. During the study period, physical inactivity rates in Western high-income countries increased from almost 31% to nearly 37%, while rates remained stable around 16%. %, in low-income countries.

In industrialized countries and around the world, "national policies need to be implemented to encourage non-motorized modes of transportation, such as walking and cycling, and to promote participation in leisure and active sports during leisure," write authors.

These initiatives are already working in some places. For example, the percentages of physical inactivity in East and Southeast Asia decreased from about 26% in 2001 to about 17% in 2016, largely due to the growing enthusiasm for recreation. and the use of public parks.

The United States could benefit from such policies, as early-year federal data showed that only 23% of Americans adhere to the physical activity guidelines in their free time. (If we include Americans who exercise by work and transportation, as did the WHO study, about 60% complied with the guidelines. .)

Overall, researchers also found that women exercise less than men. Globally, 25.5% of men did not meet the physical activity guidelines, compared to 31.5% of women. According to the authors, this gap is likely related to the different gender-related work and leisure standards around the world, as well as to the security and accessibility issues in many countries that prevent women from doing business. # 39; exercise.

As countries strive to address these disparities and to integrate more physical activity into daily life and leisure, they could help to achieve WHO's goal of reducing physical inactivity by 10 percent. here in 2025, say the authors. Many of these changes are described in WHO's new Global Physical Activity Plan.

"The implementation will require bold leadership and full commitment across all sectors to change the current approach," write the study's authors. "Cross-sectoral collaboration could generate significant returns, as policies that support increased physical activity can bring other benefits to health, local economies, community well-being and environmental sustainability.