The jury’s in: Not exercising is worse for your health than smoking, diabetes and heart disease!

A recent study found that skipping exercise for even a few days can be harmful to your overall well-being. In fact, the study claims that not exercising can be even more harmful than smoking or even serious health problems like diabetes or Cardiovascular Heart Disease (CVD).

This study, published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open, detailed how researchers at the Cleveland Clinic studied 122,007 patients from 1991 to 2014 to understand the effects of exercise. They put patients on the treadmill and then recorded their mortality rates. Over time, they found that people who exercised regularly lived longer and healthier lives (i.e. had lower mortality rates) than people who didn't.

The study suggests that "Extremely vigorous activities are associated with greater survival and great benefits in older patients, particularly those with hypertension."

Thus, not exercising is equivalent to having a major disease (and worse).

The solution to the problem is simple - get your body moving and exercise! And Figure It Out, a fully-equipped gym in Versova can help you do just that!

Dr. Wael Jaber, co-author of the Cleveland study says that being unfit on a treadmill has worse prognosis such as early death than being hypertensive, diabetic or a smoker. In other words, the people who do not exercise at all face a greater risk of imminent death compared to people who are active. So, the more a person exercises; the lower is his mortality rate. Your favourite gym in Versova, Figure It Out believes in this relationship passionately!

Other than the big revelation that fitness leads to a longer life, the benefits of exercise were found to be universal regardless of age or gender. When referring to age in particular, the study found that whether you're in your 40s or 80s, exercise will yield benefits that will keep you healthier for longer, especially in comparison to people who don't exercise much (or at all).

We already know that a sedentary lifestyle hurts us in the long run, a fact that the study concurred with. However, the more shocking fact is that when people don’t exercise, their risk factors for ill health overwhelmed even harmful habits like smoking or eating junk food, as well as life-threatening diseases like diabetes, CVD or even end-stage chronic diseases.

The study stated that "People who don't perform well on treadmills or are overwhelmed within 5 minutes of running have almost double the mortality risk than people who have a kidney failure." Comparing those with sedentary lifestyles to the top exercise-performing people, the risk associated with death is 500% higher. And if you compare the people who simply sit versus the highest performing people on the exercise test, the mortality risk is about three times higher compared to that of smoking and diabetes.

Stay healthy, stay active! To know more about how fitness can change your life for the better, drop into your favourite gym in Versova, Figure It Out!

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