Everyone is aware that exercise is crucial for general health; in addition to its many physical advantages, it also has significant psychological advantages.
According to a recent study, increasing your daily activity by no more than 20 minutes may reduce your risk of having to visit the hospital in the future for a significant health condition.
Data from 81,717 UK Biobank individuals aged 42 to 78 were utilized in the study, which was then published in JAMA Network Open.
Over the course of seven years, researchers followed up with participants who had worn accelerometers for one week.
152 people living in typical circumstances had their time spent engaging in sedentary activity, mild physical activity, moderate-to-vigorous activity and sleeping evaluated using wearable cameras and diaries.
After determining the individuals’ levels of exercise, researchers utilized a modeling approach to replace sedentary behavior with twenty minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise.
They discovered that even just those 20 minutes of additional physical activity greatly decreased the likelihood of further hospitalizations.
Higher levels of physical activity were linked to decreased odds of hospitalization for the following disorders: gallbladder disease, diabetes, urinary tract infections, venous thromboembolism, pneumonia, iron deficiency, ischemic stroke, anemia, colon polyps and diverticular disease.
This finding emphasizes the importance of physical activity in preventing the development of the conditions listed above.
Only 20 minutes more of physical exercise each day was shown to reduce hospitalization rates from 3.8 percent in the case of colon polyps to 23 percent for diabetes.
The author of the study, Dr. Johannes, asserts that physical activity and exercise can promote resilience to stress and lessen weakness.
Additionally, it could lower the likelihood of comorbid conditions like diabetes, deconditioning, and coronary artery disease, which can make an illness worse.
He says that by lowering the risk of comorbidities, illnesses like pneumonia or urinary tract infections could be less severe and, as a result, easier to treat outside of the hospital, avoiding the need for hospitalization.
According to Dr. Johannes, it is not unexpected that exercise is connected to a decreased risk of hospitalization for stroke, which is frequently linked to heart disease, given that exercise has been linked to a lower risk of ischemic heart disease.
It is not unforeseen that exercise is linked to a decreased chance of hospitalization for diabetic complications, either – he goes on to assess.
This is because exercise may frequently enhance diabetes control by improving muscle sensitivity to insulin.
Dr. Johannes emphasizes that it’s crucial to bear in mind that some of the people who are at risk of hospitalization for these specific disorders may have underlying problems that limit their ability to be as active, indicating that their low physical activity can actually be a result of their poor health in the first place, causing a vicious cycle.
