The Big Number: 58 percent of U.S. adults never do muscle-strengthening exercise at all
It’s not just getting moving that is important for better health. Health experts say people should have a muscle-strengthening component to their exercise, too.
Yet 58 percent of American adults don’t do any muscle-strengthening exercise, according to research. Among the activities that qualify are lifting weights and exercising with elastic bands, both of which create resistance that you must work against, as well as push-ups, situps, climbing stairs, cycling, hiking up hills.
Study: 8 In 10 Adults Lie To Their Doctors About Their Health
SALT LAKE CITY — Despite the guaranteed confidentiality and even though it could potentially put one’s health at risk, a new study finds that as many as eight in 10 people lie to their doctors about their health.
Researchers conducted two surveys and discovered that about 80 percent of younger and middle-aged adults aren’t completely honest with their physicians, while about 60 percent of baby boomers misrepresent themselves. What’s more, about a third of respondents admitted they didn’t speak up when they didn’t agree with their doctor’s treatment plan or recommendation.
“If patients are withholding information about what they’re eating, or whether they are taking their medication, it can have significant implications for their health. Especially if they have a chronic illness,” says the study’s first author, Andrea Gurmankin Levy, an associate professor in social sciences at Middlesex Community College in Connecticut, in a news release.
Results were based on two surveys. The first collected responses from 2,011 participants typically in their mid- to late thirties. The second included 2,499 men and women about 61 years old on average. Participants in both surveys were presented with seven hypothetical situations in which they might feel inclined to lie to their doctors or hide certain health behaviors from them. They were asked to disclose whether or not they’d actually lied in the given situations, and if they did, to explain why.
In the survey of younger respondents, 81 percent admitted to lying about a certain behavior, compared to about 61 percent of the older segment in the second survey. About 46 percent of the younger patients had also disagreed with a doctor’s recommendation, versus about 31 percent of the baby boomers. And 32 percent of those in the first survey haven’t understood a physician’s instructions, versus 24 percent in the second survey.