A new study was just published from Cleveland Clinic that stated that a lack of “exercising is worse for your health than smoking, diabetes and heart disease.”
A lot of the points made in the article, which takes its data from treadmill based stress tests at the Cleveland Clinic is very true. Living a sedentary lifestyle and not exercising is incredibly detrimental to your health. That being said, I am concerned that some unintended negative consequences could result from this article.
Firstly, how many of those people tested that had sedentary lifestyles and performed poorly on these stress tests were already fighting these conditions? A lot of time, a lack of physical fitness can lead to heart disease, diabetes and other conditions? The point should be made that regardless of pre-existing conditions, exercise is an important component of both treatment and prevention.
Secondly, a title such as this is dangerous, as it devalues the dangers of smoking. Exercise is a great preventer for heart disease and diabetes, but the statistics are not there for cancers associated with smoking. Every time an article is published claiming that 4 cups of coffee a day is beneficial to the body, I feel as though I have an excuse to drink as much as I’d like. This article paves the way for smokers to continue poor habits with a medical journal’s support.
There are always multiple sides to clinical testing and while the findings of this article are accurate and extremely important, we have to be careful how they get reported. We is very easy do a disservice to medical research using claims such as these.
To read the full article, click here: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/19/health/study-not-exercising-worse-than-smoking/index.html