It seems like we hear about horrible diseases in one way or another almost every day.

From seeing news reports celebrity diagnoses, the crowdfunders that pop up in our newsfeeds as friends and neighbors try to pay for their treatment, and even local gossip about what new ailment has hit the family, disease is all around. And it’s more than a little anxiety inducing.

But in great news for our physical and mental health, a new study has come out of the University of Iowa revealing a really simple way to cut down out risk of 19 chronic diseases – including cancer, heart disease, lung conditions, and even diabetes.

And, coming into the New Year, it’s something that many of us are striving for anyway.

Of course, we all know that exercise improves our general physical and mental wellbeing, but a study led by the University of Iowa’s Dr Lucas Carr has proven once and for all that half an hour’s exercise per day is a key way to keep the body healthy and disease-free.

In his study, he provided a simple questionnaire to more than 7,000 patients at the University of Iowa’s Medical Center. The survey asked the patients about their level of physical activity, allowing Carr and his team to draw patterns between the level of physical activity and the prevalence of chronic disease.

Carr’s Exercise Vital Sign survey asked the patients to answer the following questions:

• On average, how many days per week do you engage in moderate to vigorous exercise (like a brisk walk)?
• On average, how many minutes do you engage in exercise at this level?

Each patient’s simple, numerical answer to the two questions was analysed by the researchers, and their results – which were published recently in the CDC journal Preventing Chronic Disease – were conclusive. The more exercise, the less likely a patient was to suffer from chronic disease.

The patients who engaged in moderate to vigorous exercise for at least 150 minutes per week (an average of half an hour per day) were shown to be significantly less likely to develop chronic diseases, whilst those who took part in very little exercise were much more likely to suffer from a chronic condition.

With these conclusions in mind, in a recent statement Carr recommended a new approach to patient wellbeing:

“In our health care environment, there’s no easy pathway for a doctor to be reimbursed for helping patients become more physically active. And so, for these patients, many of whom report insufficient activity, we need options to easily connect them with supportive services like exercise prescriptions and/or community health specialists.”

Surprisingly, Carr noted that most US hospitals fail to ask patients about their levels of physical activity, despite the ease of doing so.

The questionnaire offered at the University of Iowa’s Medical Center was quick for patients to complete on a tablet, where the data was automatically registered, cutting down any need for paperwork. And, as Carr notes in the statement, the few seconds a patient takes to fill out such a survey could be key to safeguarding their health into the future:

“This two-question survey typically takes fewer than 30 seconds for a patient to complete, so it doesn’t interfere with their visit. But it can tell us a whole lot about that patient’s overall health.”

As such, the research comes with two clear recommendations: medical professionals need to take a keener interest in their patients’ exercise levels; and as individuals, just thirty minutes of exercise per day could quite literally save us.

Stick with that ‘New Year, New You’ resolution: it’s key to helping you live a longer, healthier life.

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