In which countries do people walk and play sports more? Let's find out.
Physical activity, along with proper nutrition, is considered one of the main factors of a healthy lifestyle. Numerous scientific studies have found that regular exercise and walking can improve brain function, eliminate depression and help avoid obesity. In 2017, scientists from the U.S. state of California decided to find out which countries are the most active. The results of the scientific work were very interesting and useful. They can help help millions of people around the world who are at risk of being affected by weight gain. After all, obesity can cause the development of deadly cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. As part of this article, I propose to find out which countries lag behind others in terms of physical activity, how it affects their health and how this problem can be solved.
Data on people's physical activity were collected using the Argus app. It, like many other services for fitness enthusiasts, collects information about the physical activity of users. The most important and visual indicator is the number of steps taken per day. It is believed that each person should take more than 10,000 steps every day. It turns out that every day a person needs to give up some modes of transport and walk about 8 kilometers. If a person walks at an average speed of 5 kilometers per hour, then it will take about 1.5 hours, which is not so much.
There is a chagomer both on the smartphone and in fitness trackers. Pictured is Xiaomi Mi Band 5
At the disposal of scientists from Stanford University (USA), about the physical activity of 700,000 people. Combining all this information, the scientists found that the average user of fitness applications every day makes about 5000 steps. The most active users were residents of Japanese Hong Kong - on average, each of them every day makes about 6,880 steps. But the most low-active were the residents of Saudi Arabia, who every day make 3,103 steps every day.
There is no doubt that lack of activity harms human health. Even my colleague Alexander Bogdanov has been talking about this recently. In 2016, researchers examined data on physical activity by more than a million men and women. It turned out that people with a sedentary lifestyle had the highest risk of death from all possible causes. These include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and many other deadly diseases. And almost certainly many of these people had problems with excess weight. As part of the scientific work, American researchers also found out in which countries low levels of physical activity lead to obesity.
Obesity triggers the development of deadly diseases
The results of the study showed that the more "inequality of activity" in the country, the more full people there are. By this term it is customary to mean the ratio in the country of active and low-active people. For example, in Sweden there is no such phenomenon that half of the country is physically active, and the other half prefers to move only by transport or to lie on the couch at all. For the most part, the Swiss love physical activity, so most of the population is not obese. Researchers presented this as a great discovery, but in fact, this relationship is quite logical.
To meet the daily norm of physical activity, you can give up elevators and climb stairs
But in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, the rate of "activity inequality" is high. Researchers found that in these countries, women lead much less active lifestyles than men. The researchers did not provide accurate data on the number of daily steps taken by Russian residents. But the aforementioned inequality rate in our country does not reach high levels. It turns out that many of us lead an active lifestyle and we do not experience problems with excess weight. At least there are few users of the Argus app.
According to the researchers, residents of some countries would be happy to be active, but they are hindered by circumstances. For example, in the American cities of Memphis and Houston walking is not welcome, so most of the population drives cars. But in cities with paths for cyclists and an abundance of different parks people love to walk. However, do not forget that you can always find a way to fill the daily norm of physical activity. For example, the exercise at home has not been canceled.
