Active Hospitals
The Active Hospitals project aims to get us talking about why moving more is important for our health.
Too little physical activity causes 1 in 6 UK deaths- the same as smoking! Moving more helps our physical and mental health, and reduces the risk of common conditions such as heart disease, cancer and dementia. Physical Activity includes anything that makes your heart beat a little faster, makes you feel a little warmer, and breathe a little faster. This could include dancing around the kitchen, walking the dog, pushing a hoover, or going to an organised exercise class. Even a little bit more activity is beneficial- increasing from 10 to 20 minutes of moderate exercise a week, can significantly affect your life expectancy. (Moderate exercise means that you can talk but not sing). Every little helps- start small and build up!
Physical activity:
- Improves your mental well being and mood: can help manage day to day worries.
- Helps you sleep better, giving you more energy in the day.
- Helps control excess weight gain.
- Improves the fitness of your heart and lungs to help you to do your daily activities
- Helps prevent blood pressure problems.
Long periods of time-spent sitting down can affect your health in a number of ways, and raise the risk of many common health conditions. Make sure that you get up regularly, and move about for a few minutes.
Try to use your muscles to do heavy work at least twice a week. This could include activities such as carrying heavy shopping, gardening, or pushing a buggy or a wheelchair.
Balance activities are important as we get older. Try getting up from a chair without holding the arms, or visit Balance exercises - NHS (www.nhs.uk) for ideas.