UPFRONT | News PATIENT CARE Take 5 Health group brings physical activity to primary care for disease management Exercise Is Medicine Canada (EIMC) National Task Force, a team of multi-disciplinary health-care and exercise professionals, is aim-ing to get physical activity and exercise into mainstream pa-tient care in an effort to pre-vent and manage chronic dis-eases, including diabetes. Dr. Jan Hux, chief scien-tific advisor for the Canadian Diabetes Association, said the Canadian Diabetes Asso-ciation’s 2013 Clinical Prac-tice Guidelines for the Pre-vention and Management of Diabetes in Canada recom-mends all individuals with diabetes participate in at least 150 minutes of moder-ate to vigorous intensity aerobic exercise each week and encourages resistance training three times a week. “Providing diabetes care providers with practical and effective strategies for incorpo-rating physical activity into a management plan is extremely valuable for people living with diabetes,” Hux said. Dr. Jonathon Fowles, an exercise physiologist at the Centre of Lifestyle Studies at Acadia University in Nova For more on clinical management, visit www.canadianchiropractor.ca minutes per week is the recommended aerobic physical activity for healthy adults percentage of Canadian adults who lack physical activity www.canadianchiropractor.ca 8 Canadian Chiropractor December 2013 Illustration: Brian Fray Scotia and a member of the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP) working group with EIMC, has been working extensively at pro-moting practical strategies to assist health-care professionals with incorporating exercise into primary care. “There’s a range of ways to help in the process as opposed to simply telling people to be more active,” said Dr. Fowles. Susan Yungblut, national task force manager with EIMC, said her organization is part of a global initiative that is bridging the gap between the physical activity sector and our traditional health-care sector, which reinforces the importance of exercise when talking to patients. “We understand that pri-mary care professionals have very limited time when seeing patients. Our goal is to provide the resources and tools to support the integration of physical activity and exercise into our health-care system to improve patient outcomes.” NUmBER CRUNCHINg Health-care professionals and proponents are promoting the benefits of exercise and physical activity in disease prevention and treatment. Getting physical percentage of primary care physicians who include exercise history as part of their initial examination 47 150 51 economic burden of illnesses or injuries associated with physical inactivity billion $5.3
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