Exercise and healthy living is the ‘miracle treatment’ that could significantly ease the strain on Scotland’s crippled NHS. With a growing number of elderly people and a Scottish lifestyle plagued by obesity, alcohol, drug and smoking addiction, hospitals and GP surgeries are experiencing record demand.
And experts believe that a healthier lifestyle as the population ages is vital to the survival of the NHS in its current form. Dawn Skelton, professor of aging and health at Glasgow Caledonian University, is among those trying to encourage better habits in patients.
She said: “Physical activity reduces our risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer. It reduces disease symptoms. It’s a panacea, but it’s just not in a pill.”
A World Health Organization report last year said that increasing each individual’s activity levels by a few percent could save billions of pounds a year on health services around the world. And Professor Skelton, an exercise physiologist, wholeheartedly agrees.
She sees many elderly patients become chronically ill after a simple fall and believes that a few simple exercises can drastically reduce hospitalization. She said: “There are many reasons why people might fall, but one of the main things is that as we get older, all our reserves, our eyesight, our hearing, our balance – all the sensory inputs that help us keep our balance – begin to decrease. decline in all of us.
“But some of us started the decline a little earlier, maybe because of a sedentary lifestyle or health issues or medication, but if you could improve someone’s strength and balance so they can correct that trip and stay upright, it makes a big difference. ” whether someone actually falls and breaks something.”
Skelton continued: “Traps are huge and at the moment we can see this highlighted by the pressures there are with people who cannot be fired. About 75 percent of all hospital beds are occupied by frail, older adults who have sometimes entered as a result of a fall, but sometimes end up in the hospital.
“Ultimately, they need rehab or a care package to support them when they first go home or have to go to a care home because they are unsafe for themselves because they fall so often that they become weak.”
But she said exercise can improve strength and balance, helping people feel more confident to move and therefore more active. Skelton said: “They’re not necessarily going to become a non-faller because people can fall at any age, but if we can get them back to the point where they stop worrying about falling, they just get on with life, that’s a huge result for them and their families.”
She said about a third of all people who enter a care home do so because of instability and falls, adding: “It’s a big deal as falls are preventable. It’s just that people have to work harder. It’s not an easy solution.” In 2018, activity guidelines were drawn up by the chief medical officers of the four home countries.
Skelton said: “To reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, depression and diabetes from being overweight, they came up with 150 minutes of exercise a week. Ideally, this should be something that makes us slightly hotter or breathless. It’s something beyond a walk, something that leaves us huffing and puffing a bit.
“It’s better to break it up rather than just do two and a half hours on a Saturday and then do nothing for the rest of the week. Within that activity, we need to do something that challenges our balance and something that challenges our mind at least twice a week. week warmer or tense muscles. That could be going to the gym and lifting weights, but it could also be sitting and standing repeatedly.
“I do worry about the generations to come. Are we going to see more fallers because they don’t build that reserve of strengths and balances?” She said the country now has “a pandemic of rehabilitation needs”.
Skelton added: “Following Covid, we are so vulnerable. We must support everyone who has been feeling less well in recent years to move more. Exercise has the ability to reduce symptoms, lower your chance of getting something in the future. Almost no disease or condition is affected by exercise, or the lack of it, unless it is a neurological condition such as motor neuron disease.
“Things like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, metabolic disease, arthritis are strongly related to a lack of activity, as are things like depression, loneliness and social isolation.”
And she thinks people with a care package should be encouraged to exercise more. A care package should include exercise, as this may result in the person not needing it at all and living completely independently.
The professor said: “What usually happens is that the care goes in and even more is done for them and then they end up in a care home anyway because their muscles can’t support them.” She thinks doctors should ask about activity when asking about smoking, drinking and a patient’s weight.
Many Scots have an unhealthy relationship with food, alcohol, cigarettes and drugs as well as a reluctance to exercise and this lifestyle is keenly felt at the front doors of hospitals where beds are taken with illnesses related to their excesses.
The Scottish Government’s 2021 Scottish Health Survey found that two-thirds of Scottish adults were overweight, one-third obese and one in five children were at risk of becoming obese. The report said: “Research has shown that more than one in 20 cancers in adults is related to being overweight.
“Obesity is linked to a range of comorbidities, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and certain cancers. The risk could generally be reduced even with a modest reduction in body mass.
The report also points to a link between being overweight and mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, and says there is a link between obesity in middle age and possible dementia later in life.
Smoking is also a major public health problem in Scotland and a major cause of preventable ill health, premature death and disability.
A report from Public Health Scotland found that in 2019 there were 54,315 hospital admissions where smoking was the primary reason for admission and 104,896 admissions where it was a primary or secondary reason. Drug admissions accounted for 12,474 hospital admissions in a year and there were 35,124 alcohol-related admissions.
A National Records for Scotland report also listed 1,245 alcohol-related deaths, the second year in a row of an increase. And there is also a worrying rise in drug deaths in the last two months of 2022.
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