According to a study published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention, only 28 percent of the U.S. adult population meets the recommended aerobic and muscle-building activities established by health officials.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that healthy adults spend at least 150 minutes per week, about 20 minutes a day, doing moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and at least two days per week doing muscle-strengthening activities.
The CDC analyzed more than 30,000 responses from its 2020 National Health Interview Survey. The research showed that activity could have been negatively impacted during the height of the pandemic.
People living in rural areas were less likely to get enough exercise. Only 16 percent of people outside cities met benchmarks for aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities, compared with 28 percent in large metropolitan areas.
Regionally, people living in the South were less physically active than those in other regions, while people in the West were most active.
The research concluded that local, state and national improvements are needed to promote healthy exercise, such as cleaning up physical spaces in cities and rural areas to make them more inviting to activity and encouraging philanthropic investments in research.
The findings were published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
