Physical Exercise - History

History

The benefits of exercise have been known since antiquity. Marcus Cicero, around 65 BC, stated: "It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor." However, the link between physical health and exercise (or lack of it) was only discovered in 1949 and reported in 1953 by a team led by Jerry Morris. Dr. Morris noted that men of similar social class and occupation (bus conductors versus bus drivers) had markedly different rates of heart attacks, depending on the level of exercise they got: bus drivers had a sedentary occupation and a higher incidence of heart disease, while bus conductors were forced to move continually and had a lower incidence of heart disease. This link had not previously been noted and was later confirmed by other researchers.

Read more about this topic:  Physical Exercise

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    ... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.
    Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)

    To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race.
    Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)