When it comes to heart health, we often hear more “don’ts” than “do’s”.
- – Don’t eat fats,
– don’t eat sugar,
– don’t eat cholesterol,
…don’t, don’t, don’t.
So it’s pretty nice when we hear a “do”, right?
There is one thing that you must do to save yourself from heart attacks.
Yet the World Health Organization recently revealed in a new study published in the Lancet Global Health journal that one-third people in the Western world never do this.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that each adult get either five hours of moderate exercise weekly (such as brisk walking) or 2.5 hours of strenuous exercise, like running, in order to stay healthy.
So, do we do that?
Scientists reviewed 358 surveys from 168 countries, including a total of 1.9 million people. The countries on which the surveys were based contain 96% of the world’s population.
These are the trends they discovered:
1. 27.5% of the world’s adults do not exercise at all.
2. Women are less active than men, with 32% of women and 23% of men being completely inactive. This inequality is highest in Central and South Asia and in the Middle East and North Africa.
3. People in countries with higher average income were less likely to exercise than people in countries with lower average income: 37% of people in high-income countries, 26% of those in middle-income countries, and 16% of those in low-income countries are physically inactive. This is partly because people in higher-income countries do sedentary work while people in lower-income countries are more likely to do manual labor.
4. Regionally speaking, the highest level of inactivity was found in Latin America and the Caribbean (39%), high-income Western countries (37%), and high-income Asian countries (36%).
5. Within each country, activity levels varied according to the characteristics of specific areas, such as the availability of community sports programs, the availability of gyms and other exercise programs, the presence of nature walks close to cities, and the structure of the road networks.
6. Economic development and urbanization, as clearly seen in China and Brazil, led directly to lower physical activity and poorer health.
Yet exercising to save your heart doesn’t have to be so difficult.
Here is the easiest, most effective exercise to eliminate high blood pressure—as soon as today—in as little as 9 minutes…
And if your cholesterol is high, you must absolutely stop eating this ONE ingredient that you didn’t even know you were consuming…