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Reporting that the global mortality burden of physical inactivity stands at more than 5.3 million deaths annually and is similar to that of cigarette smoking at 5 million deaths per year, I-Min Lee, from Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts, and colleagues urge for the adoption of initiatives to promote the attainment of the World Health Organization’s recommendation of 150 minutes per week of moderate physical activity, such as brisk walking.The team acquired burden-of-physical-activity measures through several large cohort studies from around the world using input from the Lancet Physical Activity Series Working Group, including data on prevalence of physical activity at baseline and incidence of death and relevant noncommunicable disease. Those data were then used to determine the population attributable fraction by country, by region and globally for coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, colon cancer and all-cause mortality.
The researchers found that by eliminating inactivity globally, the world’s population would gain an estimated median 0.68 years in life expectancy (range 0.41 to 0.95), and that inactivity was tied to 5.3 million of 57 million deaths around the world in 2008. The researchers commented that complete global elimination of inactivity was unlikely, but with a 10 or 25 percent reduction in global rates of inactivity, an estimated 533,000 and 1.3 million deaths, respectively, due to all-cause mortality would be prevented. Writing that “physical inactivity has a major health effect worldwide,” the authors observe, “Decrease in or removal of this unhealthy behavior could improve health substantially.”
Lee, I.M., et al. Lancet Physical Activity Series Working Group: effect of physical inactivity on major noncommunicable diseases worldwide: an analysis of burden of disease and life expectancy. Lancet. 380(9838):219-29.
—Dr. Bob Goldman
www.WorldHealth.net
