Do Medical Doctors Exercise?

Current recommendations are of 30 mins of moderate (note 1) physical activity, at least 5 times a week. This is what medical doctors should tell their patients to promote and maintain health.

note 1: moderate physical activity can be just a walk at a good pace making heart frequency go up. Shopping, just to make this clear, is light activity. We're not talking of running, that would be intense activity.

But what about the doctors, are they exercising or just being gurus? A study recently published on the British Journal of Sports Medicine tried to look into this with a paper entitled: Doctors: fighting fit or couch potatoes.

The results aren't encouraging: only 21% of the 61 trainees interviewed met the healthy lifestyle recommendations of physical activity.

What this means is that 79% of them were sedentary. If these data were applicable to the general population this would mean that 80% of physicians don't do the minimum physical activity to maintain health. Is this what studying medicine brought them to? 80% is even worse than what the general population does.

Is it due to the lack of facilities? Well this study has found that

Conversely, more doctors without on-site gym facilities met DOH-recommendations, than those with (p<0.05).

So will the advice they have to give be followed by their patients? Imagine a chubby doctor telling a chubby patient to start a fitness program. Will he obtain a good compliance from the patient? The Healthy Living Blog, which has touched this issue too, states:

Previous research has shown that doctors who exercise are more likely to counsel their patients to do the same, and that patients are more willing to try exercising when their doctors disclose their own personal workout habits.

Commenter DR from Health Habits Blog conclusively comments:

Western medicine is based on treating disease. Not preventing disease. And certainly not promoting health.

Should doctors promote healthy lifestyle and prevention or just try to fix patients up when something goes wrong? What kind of doctor do you want?


Reference: Gupta K, Fan L., Doctors: fighting fit or couch potatoes., Br J Sports Med. 2008 Dec 4. (pubmed link)

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