Importance of Physical Activity Epidemiology
According to the World Health Organization, health is “the state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being.” This idea of becoming a healthier version of oneself has continued to gain popularity over the past few decades. This change in public point of view can be attributed to fact that over the past century, the leading causes of dead have shifted from communicable disease to non-communicable diseases. In other words, rather than dying from infectious disease such as pneumonia and tuberculosis, people nowadays are instead dying from chronic diseases such as heart disease. The difference in these two types of diseases is that chronic diseases, unlike infectious diseases, are often attributed
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Physical activity epidemiology is “the study of how a disease or health outcome is distributed in populations and what factors influence or determine this distribution” (Gordis, 2000). The idea behind epidemiology claims that disease is not random, but rather it has causal and preventative factors. These factors can be studied by looking at different populations or subgroups of individuals within a population. The goal of studying these different populations and subgroups is to better understand how different health determinants, which in this case would be physical activity, decrease mortality and morbidity. In order to better understand a population’s physical activity epidemiology, it is important to take into account prevalence and trends within the population being studied. Prevalence, when talking in terms of epidemiology, is “the number of affected persons present in the population at a specific time divided by the number of persons in the population at that time” (Gordis, 2000). When looking at prevalence over a period of time, it is possible to recognize trends, which provide the opportunity to see if different health determinants do indeed …show more content…
As mentioned earlier, this set of data encompasses the entire United States, separating the data in terms of location, gender, age, as well as a few subcategories. When examining the nation wide population, we see that approximately 50.5% of the population claims to participate in at least 150 minutes of aerobic physical activity on a weekly basis. Although there are states with both higher and lower rates of physical activity, when examining each of the 50 states as well as Puerto Rico and Guam, the largest outlier happens to be Puerto Rico, where only 33.6% of the population claims to participate in aerobic physical activity. The rest of the samples may vary somewhat, but based on the sample size I examined, no state or region was above 60% or below 40%. After looking at the general population data for each state, the BRFSS website also makes it possible to break the data down even further by examining differences in age and gender when examining aerobic physical activity. At a national level, the data shows that the most active age groups is the 18-24 year olds with the 65+ age group coming in a close second. Although the 18-24 age group may not be surprising, because this is the age group that often times is still in college and not yet working immense number of hours beginning their future careers yet, allowing them to continue leading an active lifestyle as they have become accustomed to growing up. The
Barnes PM, Schoenborn CA. Physical activity among adults: United States, 2000. Advance data from vital and health statistic; no. 333. Hyattsville, Maryland: National Center for Health Statistic. 2003.
...ll, B, Willett, W, Manson, J, Leitzmann, M, Stampfer, M, Hunter, D, & Colditz, G (2001), 'Physical activity and mortality: a prospective study among women', American Journal Of Public Health, 91, 4, pp. 578-583
International Journal of Epidemiology 36.6 (2007): 1229-234. International Journal of Epidemiology. Oxford University Press, 28 Sept. 2007. Web. The Web.
Health monitoring allows you to discover and treat health problems early, before consequences. Many psychological disorders, cancers, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular diseases, pulmonary diseases, and musculoskeletal disorders can be prevented by monitoring health and incorporating physical activity and exercise; for example: depression, breast cancer, obesity, cardiomyopathy, emphysema, and osteoarthritis. There are primary benefits that can be received from engaging in exercise or physical activity. One of the main benefits is reducing the risk of premature death: “it is been estimated that people who were physically active for approximately 7 hours a week have a 30 to 40% lower risk of dying early than those who are active less than 30 minutes per week” (Kohl & Murray 2012). It's clear that research has found the importance of avoiding inactivity and that even a little physical activity is better than none at all; due to dose response relation between poor health and the amount of physical activity.
The reasoning for why physical fitness relates to income level in the United States proves to be highly controversial. Physical fitness can be defined as the ability to carry out tasks without undue fatigue; it consists of components such as the strength of the heart, muscles, and body composition. Although health is critical to maintain at any age, many Americans in today’s time ignore the physical needs their body demands. Dave White states that, “National Health and Nutrition Examination survey indicate that only approximately 9.6% of the U.S. population currently meets the U.S. physical activity guidelines.” (266) Only by observing America’s social media such as advertisements and models, one
Although most studies have shown that physical activity prevent morbidity and mortality independent of weight, the range of benefits vary for among various groups stratified according to age, sex, race and BMI. Also, different dose of physical ...
The level of the population’s level of physical activity is becoming a major public health concern in the United States (Wahlgren, 2011). As a result of urban sprawl, Americans rely heavily on personal vehicles to travel to work or other destinations. This is leading to a sedentary life style for the public as they take to their cars to travel to their destination. The public’s perception of the environments in which they live in are likely influencing their behaviors resulting in their dependance on personal vehicles. (Wahlgren, 2011). The physical environment and peoples’ levels of physical activity are directly connected. Low density zoning and auto-dependent development is resulting in the promotion of sedentary life styles. Most activities, like commuting to work or shopping, requires the use of a personal vehicle because of the area’s isolation in residential zones and commercial zones (Ewing, 2010). Alternative modes like walking or bicycling are rather impractical, as the areas often have little to no sidewalks or other pedestrian friendly amenities (Marshall, 2009). The Low density design is developed because residential homes have fewer units per acre and commercial buildings tend to only be a couple of stories and spaced further apart. The sizes of lots tend to be bigger to accommodate large parking lots that are often oversized and unsafe for pedestrians.
Cardiovascular disease, also known as heart disease, is a term used for diseases involving the heart, arteries, capillaries and veins. The problems associated with cardiovascular disease are often a result of atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is caused by a buildup of plaque in artery walls, which disrupts blood flow through the arteries (American Heart Association, 2011). Cardiovascular disease causes a variety of conditions including heart attacks, ischemic stroke, heart failure, coronary artery disease, arrhythmias and heart valve problems (American Heart Association, 2011). These conditions lead to serious health related issues for individuals, including death. Every year there are around 600,000 individuals in the United States that die from cardiovascular disease, making heart disease the leading cause of death in both men and women (CDC, 2014). Although there are ways to decrease the risk of heart disease, the rate has been consistently increasing over the years, costing America billions of dollars in health care services annually. Contributing factors to the rise in heart disease includes the rate of obesity and a lack of physical activity (Dhaliwal, Welborn & Howat, 2013; Poirier, Giles, Bray, Hong, Pi-Sunyer & Eckel, 2006). These articles provide research that answers the question of how obesity and physical activity are linked to cardiovascular disease.
Staying healthy does not only mean to eat a healthy diet, but also to be active and to provide our body with stamina so it can fight various diseases. According to Myers (2003) around a quarter of a million deaths in the United States are caused by insufficient physical activity. The US Public Health Service (1996) has provided enough evidence towards the effect of physical exercise on cardiovascular (e.g. coronary heart disease) and non-cardiovascular health (hypertension, osteoporosis, colon cancer etc.). They followed a group of people for several years and found a positive correlation between the amount of participants’ physical activity and their health problems. So how much exercise is just enou...
Participation in sport, particularly in adults is shown to be rapidly decreasing. In The general Household Survey (2002, cited in National statistics) it was discovered that with the exclusion of walking, only 43% of the population had participated in some form of exercise in the four weeks prior to the research interview. It is accepted with recent statistics that participation rates in the UK are not adhering to the advised five times a week from the Department of Health, the author feels this is a worrying reality as there are many health implications resulting from a national neglect towards exercise.
Epidemiology Epidemiology is the study of the demographics of disease processes, including the study of epidemics and other diseases that are common enough to allow statistical tools to be applied. It is an important supporting branch of medicine, helping to find the causes of diseases and ways of prevention. It can, using statistical methods such as large-scale population studies, prove or disprove treatment hypotheses. Another major use of epidemiology is to identify risk factors for diseases. Epidemiological studies generally focus on large groups of people and relate to a target population that can be identified.
Epidemiology in the 21st century has great significance, as health problems become more global, a global approach to health is important. Addressing public health problems on a global basis is fundamental to public health, epidemiology and the understanding of disease frequency. Collaboration across the globe has proved to provide a better outcome for public health and the population (Pearce 2013). Descriptive epidemiology embraces a respectable position within the global approach to disease surveillance along with the frequency of diseases, investigating the causes and underlying causes of disease together with understanding the means to control the disease is epidemiology in public health. The idea of epidemiology is that diseases form patterns
“The main concept is that exercise (a term we will use generically to cover both exercise training and physical activity) does more than change traditional ‘risk factors’ (blood lipids, hypertension, diabetes, etc.; Mora et al. 2007; Green et al. 2008). In this context, there is a ‘risk factor gap’, and exercise appears to be far more productive than it should be based on changes in traditional risk factors alone.”
"Physical Activity and Public Health." Scholar Commons of South Carolina. American Heart Association, 2007. Web. 03 Apr. 2014.
There exists various lifestyles and behaviours, ranging from amount of nutrition intake, mental well-being, to the amount of physical activity engaged individually. Weighing the abundance of factors, this essay primarily aims to focus on the aspect of physical activity in relevance to how it possibly affects one's lifestyle. By cross-referencing to other lifestyles and behaviours, this essay will also demonstrate the importance of physical activity in possibly alleviating the issues raised pertaining to other lifestyles as well. Throughout this essay, there will be frequent references to the socio-ecological framework in examining the aforementioned factors.