Esercizio Fisico e Salute

Physical activity can promote health and prevent illness. An increase in physical activity is one of the strategies that have the greatest positive impact on the health of a population. If everybody adopted the active lifestyle, health and greatly improve health care costs would drop dramatically. Regular exercise has well-documented preventive and / or curative of a number of different diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, colon cancer and depression. The burden of disease and illness related to physical inactivity, has higher health care costs for society. The European Union Health Information System (EUPhix) estimates that physical inactivity could cost a country about 150-300 euro per citizen per year, while the medical cost for physical inactivity in the U.S. alone was estimated at $ 75 billion in 2000. According to the World Health Report 2000, physical inactivity was estimated as the cause of 1.9 million deaths worldwide each year. The health care system is located in a position of strength to work on how to increase physical activity in the population. On the one hand, people often come into contact with the health system on a regular basis and this allows to reach and intercept the groups in society who are more sedentary, such as the elderly and the sick. A benefit of physical activity as treatment with drugs is that physical activity makes people actively involved in their treatment and encourages them to take personal responsibility for their own health. In a not too distant future also in Italy may be adopted solutions to ensure that physical activity is prescribed by the health care system, where it has been shown that a certain type of physical activity is beneficial.