Canadians won’t have to sweat as much to meet national physical-activity standards after experts determined that health benefits can be achieved with less effort than demanded by the existing targets that few of us are meeting.
Even though Canada’s guidelines are being softened, experts say more activity is best in almost every case. And some hope that, by making the goals easier to reach, more Canadians will be persuaded to get moving.
“We have become extremely sedentary and I believe that is one of those reasons why you are going to see those guideline numbers come down,” said Kelly Murumets, the president of Participaction, the Canadian agency created to inspire fitness that was consulted in the creation of the new guidelines.
With “even just minimal amounts of physical activity, there are physical health benefits” because the baseline of Canadian fitness is so low, she said. “That’s a very poor statement on our society at this point in time.”
Only 12 per cent of Canadian children and less than half of Canadian adults are meeting the existing standards, Ms. Murumets said. “It truly is alarming,” she said.
The Canadian Society of Exercise Physiology, the central Canadian body for fitness research, will recommend on Jan. 24 that the physical activity guidelines for children, adults and older people in Canada be revised to harmonize with those set by the World Health Organization and other major developed countries like the United States, Australia and Britain, Ms. Murumets said.
That would cut the recommended amount of active time for adults from 60 minutes daily to 150 minutes weekly. Children, who are currently being told to increase their activity gradually to 90 minutes per day, would be told they need to be active for an hour. And people over 65, who are now being told to be active for 30 to 60 minutes per day would be told to do 150 minutes of moderate activity a week.
The new standards will be accompanied by recommendations for the maximum amount of time that should be spent engaging in sedentary activities like watching television.
The Public Health Agency of Canada is expected to accept the new guidelines, which were determined by international experts to be the minimum amount of physical activity required to promote good health. And like the old guidelines, they certainly won’t provide the type of workout used to train elite athletes
But, if Canadians in large numbers opt to follow them, experts say, the overall physical condition of society would dramatically improve. There are 24 different diseases ranging from diabetes to heart ailments to osteoporosis that are linked in some way to inertia.
Mark Tremblay, who runs the exercise lab at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute and who helped to create the new guidelines, said setting targets that people do not see as achievable can be counterproductive.
“If you are completely sedentary and you set a target that is way off in the distance then perhaps you give up before you even start,” Dr. Tremblay said.
And the changes are not as dramatic as they might seem at first glance, he said. For children, as an example, the current recommendation is that they progress from 30 minutes a day of activity to 90 minutes a day. So, to set a recommendation of 60 minutes a day is not necessarily a reduction, he said.
Cameron Blimkie, an expert on children’s physical fitness who teaches at McMaster University in Hamilton, was not involved in writing the Canadian guidelines but helped craft those written for the Centers for Disease Control in the United States.
If the Canadian standards are rewritten to match those of other countries, said Dr. Blimkie, it will be “a reasonable attempt to encourage, rather than discourage, a population that isn’t currently meeting the established recommendations to maybe move closer to meeting them.”
How Canadian guidelines compare
