MOST LIKED BLOG OF 2011 – GETS A DUST OFF AND FRONT BLOG STATUS FOR 24 HOURS. PLEASE ‘LIKE’ OR RETWEET IF YOU FEEL THIS IS MESSAGE HAS NOT GOT THROUGH TO THOSE MAKING PUBLIC HEALTH DECISIONS OR TO ALL CLINICIANS GIVING HEALTH ADVICE

Smoking, diabetes and obesity are  major public health concerns.  At the same time there is little attention given to the health consequences of missing a day (or a lifetime) of physical activity.
Yet low physical fitness kills more Americans than does either smoking, diabetes, or obesity (see Blair). And, when one looks at it carefully, low fitness kills more Americans than smoking, diabetes and obesity in COMBINATION!! (apologies for red but it deserved it!)

As a nation, an unfit America (that’s where these data exist) dies more from low fitness than from ‘smokadiabesity.’ And low fitness is readily curable.  Do personal, and policy, priorities reflect the real killer?

Comment below or send guest comments to karim.khan@ubc.ca

Does our health system reflect this order of importance?

This graph (redrawn from Blair SN, BJSM 2009, pp. 1-2)  compares the population attributable fraction of death for men (left, coloured bar in each set) and women (right, open bar in each set). The low fitness column reflects a greater PAF for deaths than the combined smokadiabesity column.

See also Supercourse for Professor Blair`s 40-slide lecture on this topic

And click here to listen to Professor Blair`s BJSM podcast