Effective Day to Day Fitness Exercise
Consistent physical exercise has many positive health benefits, including protection against chronic disease, improved physical and mental health and cognitive function, and better health-related quality of life.
Moreover, lack of physical activity is associated with higher health care costs and utilization. Many people, however, do not get the recommended levels of physical activity. For specialist, health care users are less likely to meet physical activity recommendations and more likely to be physically inactive compared with Veterans who do not use VA health care.
Multiple personal, social, and environmental factors influence participation in physical activity. Providing memberships to home gym equipment centers may be a viable option to increase physical activity and the positive health outcomes associated with such activity.
Given that most people have access to some form of health insurance, health plan promotion of and coverage for fitness center memberships has the potential to address multiple barriers to physical activity (e.g., cost, access) and extend fitness center access to many individuals.
My objective in this evidence synthesis was to summarize the results of diverse studies of health plan-sponsored fitness center memberships in an effort to understand how these benefits affect physical activity, clinical outcomes, health care costs and utilization, retention of plan members, and member satisfaction.
Key Question
1. What are the effects of policy/benefits packages that include vouchers, rebates, premium reductions, or other economic incentives to encourage physical activity through fitness center memberships on:
(a) Physical activity participation rates among plan members?
(b) Health outcomes demonstrated to be improved by physical activity (i.e., weight, pain, glucose, blood pressure, health-related quality of life)?
(c) Overall health care costs and health care utilization? Key Question
2. What are the effects of policy/benefits packages that include vouchers, rebates, premium reductions, or other economic incentives to encourage physical activity through fitness center memberships on satisfaction with the health plan and retention of members in the health plan?
Key Question
3. Do the effects of policy/benefits packages to encourage physical activity vary by specific characteristics of the package (premium vs. lump sum) or age, sex, and physical illness of participants?
Fitness center memberships have the potential to increase levels of physical activity and, subsequently, improve health and economic outcomes for specialist. However, few studies have assessed the impact of good fitness membership benefits. The evidence base for these claims remains weak due to study design limitations, and insufficient due to the paucity of literature.
The limited evidence provides support for reductions in health care costs and utilization when comparing health plan individuals who choose to participate in workout gym memberships with those who do not—but these results may not be generalizable to specialist and are based on study designs that could be subject to bias.
The existing literature provides little insight into other outcomes such as physical activity, physical health outcomes, or health plan satisfaction or retention.
The multiple personal, social, and environmental factors influence a person’s participation in physical activity.
Consequently, multiple internal and external barriers to obtaining regular physical activity exist. Internal barriers include a lack of time and motivation, health problems, and emotional difficulties.
External barriers involve weather; cultural issues; safety concerns; limited access to facilities, gym equipment, and transportation; and monetary expenses such as those associated with attending a commercial gym center. The perceived cost of engaging in physical activity is a significant barrier that increases the likelihood of sedentary behaviors and decreases the likelihood of participation in vigorous physical activity.
Thus, reducing the cost of being physically active through providing full or partial memberships to fitness centers may be a viable option to increase physical activity and the positive health outcomes associated with such activity. Given that most people (90%) have access to some form of health insurance.
The antidepressant action is one of the most commonly accepted psychological benefits of exercise. Individuals with clinical depression tend to be less active than healthy, active adults and have a reduced capacity for physical exertion. Since people suffering from depression are not predisposed to participating in exercise, it is challenging for fines professionals to introduce physical activity to this population.
However, patients diagnosed with depression have credited exercise as being a most important element in comprehensive treatment programs for depression (Dunn et al. 2002). Cardiovascular and resistance exercise seem to be equally effective in producing Anti depressive effects (Brosse et al. 2002).
Therefore, the inclusion of resistance exercise, circuit training, calisthenics and different modes of air rowing machine exercise in treatment programs should be encouraged. It also appears that both acute exercise bouts and chronic exercise training programs have positive effect on people with clinical depression (Dunn et al. 2002).
The research does imply, though, that the greatest Anti depressive effects seem to occur after 17 weeks of exercise, although observable effects begin after 4 weeks (Scully et al. 1998).
In addition, the effects of exercise on depression seem equivalent in both genders and are uninhibited by age or health status. Although no research guidelines exist for an actual exercise prescription, the evidence supports following updated exercise guidelines for healthy adults.
Conclusion: Staying fit is an essential activity one should endeavor to participate. Today many youths are into exercising seen the structure and effect of it benefit. Looking backward from our father’s days, you will understand that most of them did not participate mostly with effective exercise. For you to grow healthy and consistent Health-wise, you need to embark on effective day-to-day fitness activities.
