Listen up, Americans. The government has been recommending you get 150 minutes of exercise a week for a decade now. Thats just 20 minutes a day and not even 1 in 4 of you can handle it.
But the Department of Health and Human Services, armed with some new research on the benefits of exercise no, not even exercise, merely physical activity is prepared to offer you losers and couch potatoes a few more inducements and a shot at redemption.
On the inducement side, getting regular physical activity has now been linked to lower rates of eight different kinds of cancer, including those of the lung, kidneys and stomach. In 2008, when the first Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans were released, government scientists could assert only that adequate levels of physical activity helped reduce the risk for breast and colon cancer.