Movement for health
Our book club pick this month focusses on the use of walking therapy for mental wellbeing but did you know that increasing movement has far reaching benefits for our lives.
When looking at research around movement, you will often come across the term physical activity rather than exercise. Physical activity is more all encompassing than exercise as it includes all forms of movement, from walking and swimming to doing housework. All physical activity has benefits for our health but worryingly only 25% of adults and 19% of young people are meeting the recommended levels of activity for their health (1). The WHO reports regular physical activity reduces risk of many types of cancer by 8–28%; heart disease and stroke by 19%; diabetes by 17%, depression and dementia by 28–32% (2).
I often find it challenging as a GP to find the time in consultations to talk about integrating physical activity into a patients treatment plan. Just telling someone to get more active is rarely effective; you need to take the time to make their plan personal and equip that person with the resources that will help them. This week I was exploring the resources available to healthcare professionals and patients on how to get started with exercise either for overall wellbeing or for specific health conditions and I was encouraged by the amount of work going on to make exercise more accessible.
For working out how much exercise you need to do for your age and circumstances my go to is the public health agency posters. They’re great at highlighting how much exercise you should be doing whether you’re a child, adolescent, adult, pregnant, post-partum or living with disability; they really have covered all bases. Focussing on adults: Adults should aim to be active every day and do at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity every week. You can split this into 30 minutes of activity most days each week. For further information I’ve linked the full guidance below (3).
In terms of getting specific information on how to move for your health condition, the Moving Medicine website is great. They have resources on exercising with heart disease, diabetes, depression and many more conditions. The exercising with depression guide developed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Mind Charity is excellent for healthcare professionals to use in consultations and start those conversations. There’s also great goal setting worksheets which makes the advice not only very practical but personal which is key! (4). If you or your patients are more tech savvy there’s also a great app to download called EXi iPrescribe Exercise. It is a NHS approved app, which provides a personalised 12 week physical activity plan with tailored support for people with long term health conditions. It is free to use, just add the code ‘moving’ when logging on (5).
Overall the resources out there are encouraging and while I appreciate that GP consultations are tight for time, a 5 minute personalised intervention providing links the right places such as the PHA guidance and Moving Medicine could have a great impact on outcomes.
References:
https://www.who.int/health-topics/physical-activity#tab=tab_1
https://www.who.int/health-topics/physical-activity#tab=tab_2
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/physical-activity-guidelines-adults-and-older-adults
https://movingmedicine.ac.uk/consultation-guides/condition/adult/depression-2/five_minute/
