Health & Fitness

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Q: What is the most important thing I can do in 2012 to improve my health, both in the short-term and long-term?

A: While this answer would vary based on your particular situation, increasing exercise is pretty hard to argue with for just about anybody.  

Study after study has provided clear evidence that physical activity has significant health benefits. To get to the point, if you exercise, you can reduce your chance of premature death by 35 per cent. If you are inactive, the opposite holds true.  

One study of inactive women found a 52-per-cent increase in death from any cause compared with more physically-active women during the course of the study.

Exercise helps your body in many ways; lowering weight, blood pressure, the risk of blood clots and cholesterol, while improving sugar and insulin control, cardiac function and causing the release of brain chemicals that contribute to our sense of well-being, amongst other benefits. 

It has been recommended that an adult should expend about a 1,000 calories per week to feel the benefits, which is equivalent to walking an hour per day, five days per week.  

But for those of us who are time-stressed, we can exercise in smaller increments and still improve our health.  

Given the many benefits and the fact that your level of exercise is something you have direct control over, why not start 2012 by getting more active? 

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Monday, January 09, 2012