Exercise

Regular exercise is obviously not the favorite activity of Austrians: According to the study “Sports and Health”, more than 60 percent of the population is inactive or engages at the most one to two times a month in physical exercise. And this is the case even though it has long been shown that carefully planned and regular exercise in the proper doses is a key to physical well-being for people of all ages. By the same token, a lack of exercise is one of the risk factors responsible for a number of common modern diseases like cardiac arrest and strokes, high blood pressure, back pain, obesity, unfavorable cholesterol counts or diabetes. New studies show that the consequences of inactivity are especially dramatic today for children and adolescents. Poor posture, obesity, accidents caused by a lack of coordination, problems with concentration, and insufficient stress reduction are just a few examples of what can result.

This situation is reason enough for Fonds Gesundes Österreich to communicate the advantages of regular health-enhancing exercise to people living in Austria, especially to couch potatoes. Our public information and education campaigns and the projects we fund are intended to help people better understand the connections between exercise and health and to motivate them to incorporate physical exercise in their everyday lives and free time activities.