Two years after the pandemic normalize working from home and move many social gatherings online, new data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that many Americans were addicted to television long before the COVID-19.
A quarter of American adults are not active enough to protect their health, according to a CDC study conducted between 2017 and 2020. The agency released a map Thursday showing Puerto Rico and southern states had the highest prevalence. of inactivity, followed by the Midwest, the Northeast and the West. Colorado, Utah, Washington and Vermont were the most active states.
“Getting enough physical activity could prevent 1 in 10 premature deaths,” Ruth Petersen, director of the CDC’s division of nutrition, physical activity and obesity, said in a statement. Health benefits include better sleep, lower blood pressure and anxiety, and reduced risk of heart disease and various types of cancer.
The CDC’s findings come from an ongoing telephone survey, called the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Any exercise outside of work, from walking to golfing to gardening, was considered physical activity.
The data point to notable differences in activity level by race and ethnicity. Nearly a third of Hispanic adults and 30% of black adults were physically inactive outside of work. Asian adults ranked better than the national average and about 20% of them were sedentary.
These disparities may be exacerbated by a lack of “safe and convenient” places for physical activity in some neighborhoods, according to the CDC. Recent research has shown that income, education, and race are correlated with access to green space in America’s metropolitan areas.
CDC is working with communities and partners across the country to make it easier and safer for people to stay active. The agency recommends that adults get at least 150 minutes of “moderate-intensity” physical activity each week, which can be broken up into shorter sessions. Families are also encouraged to incorporate physical activities into their daily routines, such as walking the dog or riding a bike to run errands.
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