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Exercise as Medicine

A New Year's resolution is the most common way to mark the new year for Americans, with over half of New Year's resolutions being to lose weight.

Not only is exercise a great way to lose weight but it is also has a positive effect on both mental and physical health. Modern neuroscience research has shown that running (or any exercise really) can boost mood and lower stress. The benefits of exercise on health are well documented today. So in reality, sports and physical exercise are closely related to medicine and this was certainly well known to our ancestors. 

The ancient Indian physician, Sushruta, who lived around 600 BCE, was the earliest known physician to prescribe daily moderate exercise to his patients. A few centuries later, another prominent physician of ancient India, Charaka advocated daily exercise, relating it to an alleviation of the doshas, particularly kapha, which controls muscles and strength. These ancient physicians also knew that exercise in moderation was best, and that excess exercise could be fatal, with some exceptions -- Charaka advocated strenuous exercise for diabetes. Yoga, which has gained a strong following in Western popular culture, is also derived from ancient Indian medicine. Yoga is considered a sister science to Ayurveda – Ayurveda incorporates yoga as a therapeutic medium. 

Yoga exercises 

Even ancient Chinese medicine (TCM) incorporated exercises like qi gong and tai chi to fix the imbalance in the body which was considered to be the cause of ill-health. TCM believes that exercise in moderation has yang effect and strengthens the Qi energy and improves blood quality; excessive exercise, on the other hand, causes depletion of Qi. The most famous of ancient Chinese doctors prescribing exercise is Hua T'O (100 CE), who advocated exercises that mimicked the actions of different animals, specifically deer, tigers, bears, monkeys, and birds.

Five animal exercise routine from ancient China

Looking at the Classical world, prescribing exercise for health began with Greek philosopher Pythagoras (~500 BCE) who established a school where followers were advised to exercise daily for health purposes. The father of modern medicine, Hippocrates, was also a strong proponent of exercise. In fact, Hippocrates is the first recorded physician to provide a written exercise prescription for a patient. Galen who followed Hippocrates' teachings also advocated exercise for good health and even wrote a treatise titled ‘On exercise with the small ball’ in which he described the negative effects (obesity) of a  sedentary lifestyle arguing that exercise was "extremely beneficial for health, and brings about a well-balanced condition, without any undue accumulation of flesh or excess thinness." He advocated for exercising with balls, stressing that  “no activity is exercise unless you become breathless." The perfect solution IMO is a game of tennis! 


Sources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4056176/ 
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18356481/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25039081/
https://physicalculturestudy.com/2020/06/01/the-long-history-of-the-medicine-ball-2/

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