“MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO” is the healthy mind inside a healthy body. Thanks to Roman poet Juvenal, this wisdom from the second century AD demonstrates how well people recognised the advantages of physical activity, even in the classical era, particularly when combined with an excellent diet. One may be forgiven for thinking that this generation of humans would be the fittest in history, considering the great breakthroughs in anatomy, physiology and medicine since then. Regretfully, this is not the case.
Lack of exercise puts roughly a third of the world’s population in danger of acquiring fatal diseases, including diabetes, cancer, stroke, and dementia. Not meeting the advised levels of physical activity in 2022, approximately 1.8 billion people, or 31% of adults worldwide,
Widely predicted to be missed is a worldwide aim established by the World Health Assembly: a 15 percent decrease in inadequate physical activity between 2010 and 2030. Why are almost two billion people failing to exercise if most know it is a non-negotiable need for a longer, better life?
There are several causes, but most importantly, modern life depends on labour limited to a desk and forms of transportation that discourage considerable physical activity. Four.4 billion people live in cities, more than 55% of the world’s population. By 2025, that number is predicted to climb to 70%. Reduced activity has come from urban life and altered employment criteria.
Another concern is the need for more clarity of shifting and sometimes contradicting fitness advice available to anyone who wishes to be in shape. Steady-state cardio will be the ideal approach to dropping weight in one month. People will be advised to substitute high-intensity workouts today. Next month, you will read that you should not do weightlifting first thing in the morning or any of a hundred other approaches. And that’s excluding a similarly deluging assault of dietary recommendations.
A fitness sector with a stake in selling equipment, gym memberships, and nutrition programs to as many people as feasible drives some of this. With a projected market value of $96.6 billion this year, Danish digital fitness startup Wexer claims the sector is expanding at around nine percent annually. Furthermore, 230 million health and fitness club memberships were estimated to be held globally last year, and the fitness business is flourishing.
Our data-driven era is even further driving this blizzard of disconnected fitness and dietary advice. Fitness influencers abound on sites like TikTok, some providing dubious value advice. More major events have happened among crazes, such as 2019’s nutritionally useless celery juice fad. And we had dry scooping – eating protein powder neat rather than diluting it in water.
Many dubious fitness advice offered online has a fundamental weakness: it is not personalised. Everybody’s body is different; differences in age, sex, and medical history – to name a few – mean that the same fitness programme or diet will have different results for various people, leading to disappointment and inconsistency at best.
Advice should be unambiguous if national governments and the WHO wish for better populations. Most doctors agree that regular physical activity—even simple tasks like walking, gardening, or housework—if done for 30 minutes or so most days of the week—may help prevent chronic diseases that tax public health systems all over. Establishing and stressing a clear message that fitness is accessible and realistic is even more crucial since the link between sensible, moderate exercise and excellent mental health is also widely documented.
Don’t abdicate responsibility for our well-being to others. That means ignoring the gimmicks and “hacks” that promise quick results and realise that we only need to future-proof our bodies for the years ahead; none of us are athletes.
