THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 22, 1995 TAG: 9512220413
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
A panel of experts chosen by the National Institutes of Health has a message for us: ``Get moving!''
This comes as a shock. My impression had been that everybody in the country was exercising except me. More than once I've had to jump to keep from getting run down by joggers, bicyclers and youths on roller blades.
TV channels are awash with people in scant attire doing calisthenics. It tires one to watch them.
If ever a country was in good physical shape, it had to be the United States, it seemed.
Now comes a warning from some topmost doctors, commissioned by one of our most respected medical clusters, to size up our health.
Their verdict: Half the population is made up of couch potatoes who switch TV channels by remote control while they are viewing people taking violent exercise.
Their solution: only 30 minutes a day of just enough exercise to tune up the body. You can even take the exercise in 10-minute segments.
``The lack of physical exercise and the burden of cardiovascular disease rest most heavily on the least active,'' the report says. ``Physical inactivity is also associated with . . . osteoporosis, diabetes, and some cancers.''
``Americans used to move more,'' said Dr. Russell V. Luepker of the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, chairman of the experts. ``Physical activity is a natural part of our evolution. Somehow, we have engineered ourselves out of that.''
He's right, of course. Think of young Abe Lincoln trudging 10 miles to borrow a book or our fathers who walked three miles through snow - always, through the snow - to school every morning.
In my day we walked to school, to the movies, to the park to play, to the grocery store for our mamas. Our lives were spent on our feet, like the first men when they arose on two feet to walk.
Now a mechanized society is easing us into sloth.
The experts urge us to set a long-term goal of a half-hour or more of ``moderate-intensity of physical activity on most days . . . ''
Start slowly, they advise sedentary people, and reach the goal by adding a few minutes each day.
Continued lack of exercise ``is a risk factor for heart attacks that ranks with smoking, excessive cholesterol and high blood pressure,'' said Dr. Reginald L. Washington at a cardiology center in Denver.
Examples of moderate activity are brisk walking, cycling, swimming, and working in the home or yard.
And, they might have added, walking a dog, such as an eager, active Labrador retriever who is not named Boomer for nothing. Why, he has me running in spurts at the other end of the leash.
Strange, some of us are more concerned about our pets' fitness than our own. ILLUSTRATION: Color drawing by Janet Shaughnessy, The Virginian-Pilot
by CNB