Health Care Policy and Reform Insights | NCPA

Tag: "exercise"

Exercise Matters

There are four key patterns of results that emerge. First, the lagged effect of physical activity is almost always larger than the current effect. This suggests that current risk factors, not only obesity but also high blood pressure and heart rate, take years to develop, which underscores the importance of consistent physical activity to ward off heart disease. Second, we find that in general physical activity reduces risk factors for heart disease even after controlling, to some extent, for unobservable confounding influences. Third, not only recreational but work-related physical activity appears to protect against heart disease. Finally, there is evidence of a dose-response relationship such that higher levels of recreational exercise and other physical activity have a greater protective effect. Our estimates of the contemporaneous and durable effects suggest that the observed declines in high levels of recreational exercise and other physical activity can potentially account for between 12-30% of the increase in obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease observed over the sample period, ceteris paribus.

Source: NBER Working Paper.

Mar 08, 2013 | 10 comments | by John Goodman

Why Are We Obsessing on Wellness?

Heresy at Health Affairs:

Virtually unheard of thirty years ago, workplace wellness is now embedded in large self-insured companies. These firms pay their workers an average of $460/year to participate in worksite wellness programs. Further, wellness is deeply enough engrained in the public policy consciousness to have earned a prominent place in the Affordable Care Act, which allows large employers to tie a significant percentage of health spending to employee health behavior and provides direct subsidies for small businesses to undertake these workplace wellness programs.

Yet the implausible, disproven, and often mathematically impossible claims of success underlying the “get well quick” programs promoted by the wellness industry raise many questions about the wisdom of these decisions and policies.

So why are we doing this? I proposed an answer in Priceless: wellness programs attract employees who are already healthy and repel those who aren’t.

Jan 17, 2013 | 5 comments | by John Goodman

Music Speeds Up Recovery, and Other Links

Music helps patients recover from surgery sooner.

Music reduces insomnia.

Teens involved in the Arts have more mental health problems.

Swedish study: Dance boosts young girls’ mental health.

The activity paradox: People with higher amounts of physical activity at work have higher blood pressure than those with higher amounts of physical activity at home.

Dec 04, 2012 | 12 comments | by Devon Herrick

A Primitive Tribe Doesn’t Get Modern Diseases

Research on the [indigenous Tsimane of northern Bolivia] led to the finding in 2009 that cardiovascular disease is probably an ill of modern societies. Studies of the group also provided the most conclusive data supporting the idea that high levels of physical activity drastically reduce the risk of diabetes, obesity and hypertension.

There have been 42 studies with results published, and at least 33 more are under way. “This is the most productive research site in anthropology today,” Ray Hames, an anthropologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said.

Jean Friedman-Rudovsky in the NYT.

Oct 08, 2012 | 9 comments | by John Goodman

Can Eating the Right Foods Change Your Genes?

In 35 years of medical research, conducted at the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute, which I founded, we have seen that patients who ate mostly plant-based meals, with dishes like black bean vegetarian chili and whole wheat penne pasta with roasted vegetables, achieved reversal of even severe coronary artery disease. They also engaged in moderate exercise and stress-management techniques, and participated in a support group. The program also led to improved blood flow and significantly less inflammation which matters because chronic inflammation is an underlying cause of heart disease and many forms of cancer. We found that this program may also slow, stop or reverse the progression of early stage prostate cancer, as well as reverse the progression of Type 2 diabetes.

Also, we found that it changed gene expression in over 500 genes in just three months, “turning on” genes that protect against disease and “turning off” genes that promote breast cancer, prostate cancer, inflammation and oxidative stress.

Full editorial by Dean Ornish in the NYT.

Oct 03, 2012 | 10 comments | by John Goodman