Doctors Prescribe Exercise as “Best Preventive Drug”
January 10, 2014 | 29,177 views
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EmailBy Dr. Mercola
One of the key health benefits of exercise is that it helps normalize your glucose, insulin, and leptin levels by optimizing insulin and leptin receptor sensitivity. This is perhaps the most important factor for optimizing your overall health and preventing chronic disease, and may explain why exercise is such a potent preventive medicine.In fact, researchers recently suggested that exercise is "the best preventive drug" for many common ailments, from psychiatric disorders to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.1 According to Jordan Metzl, a sports-medicine physician at New York City's Hospital for Special Surgery and author of The Exercise Cure:"Exercise is the best preventive drug we have, and everybody needs to take that medicine."And, as stated by Dr. Timothy Church,2 director of preventive medicine research at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge:"Exercise strengthens the entire human machine — the heart, the brain, the blood vessels, the bones, the muscles. The most important thing you can do for your long-term health is lead an active life."
Non-Exercise Movement Is Equally, if Not More, Important for Health
Unfortunately, many fail to get sufficient amounts of exercise. Worse yet, a majority of people may still endanger their health simply by sitting too much. Compelling evidence actually suggests that even if you exercise regularly,prolonged sitting is itself a risk factor for chronic disease and reduced lifespan...Overall, federal data suggest only 21 percent of American adults meet the government recommendation to engage in two and half hours' worth of aerobic and muscle-strengthening exercise each week, so there's clearly a lot of room for improvement. Ideally though, you'll want to exercise regularly AND frequently interrupt your sitting in order to optimize your health and longevity. I'll review the reasons for this below.
Exercise Benefits Found to Be EQUAL to Drugs for Heart Disease and Diabetes
A recent meta-review conducted by researchers at Harvard and Stanford3compared the effectiveness of exercise versus drug interventions on mortality outcomes for diabetes, coronary heart disease, heart failure, and stroke. After reviewing 305 randomized controlled trials, which included nearly 339,300 people, they found "no statistically detectable differences" between physical activity and medications for prediabetes and heart disease.
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