February 27, 2023 – An additional 20 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day helps prevent middle-aged and older people from having to go to hospital for serious illnesses, based on a study published in JAMA Open Network says.
Around 82,000 study participants within the UK aged between 42 and 78 wore fitness trackers called accelerometers for every week between June 1, 2013 and December 23, 2015. The researchers monitored the outcomes over a period of seven years and located that around 48,000 of the study participants ended up in hospital for a wide range of reasons.
The researchers found that physically lively people had a lower risk of hospitalization, particularly for nine diseases: gallbladder disease, urinary tract infections, diabetes (type 1 and kind 2), deep vein thrombosis, pneumonia, ischemic stroke, iron deficiency anemia, diverticulosis and colon polyps.
The risk reduction for hospitalization ranges from 3.8 percent for colon polyps to 23 percent for diabetes, the study says.
“These findings suggest that increasing moderate to vigorous physical activity by 20 minutes per day may be a useful non-pharmacological intervention to reduce hospital admissions for many common conditions, which could reduce hospital burden and improve quality of life,” the study concluded.
Lead researcher Eleanor Watts of the US National Cancer Institute in Rockville, MD, said Today The study has limitations. It didn't prove that exercise prevented the event of diseases, only that individuals weren't hospitalized due to it, she said. In addition, almost the entire participants were white.
Overall, the study confirms other research that found that physical activity improves an individual's health – and that the exercises wouldn't have to be demanding or strenuous to be useful.