What's The Value of Exercise?

We all know there is a cost associated to maintaining your health. That could mean purchasing a blender for your smoothies to buying new running shoes. I often hear “I can’t afford a gym membership”. Of course, there can be a sizable cost to these things. However, what is the cost of not doing something? This is called the inverse cost.

Are you any healthier by saving $100 by not going to the gym each month? Let’s take it a little deeper. What exactly are the true costs of not exercising? If you struggle making time for exercise, keep on reading because there is a strong financial incentive you may not have been aware of.

Health experts have known for some time that inactivity is expensive. It’s no secret that sedentary people are more likely than physically fit people to develop a number of diseases. The costs associated with treating chronic illness is enormous. A startling study published in The Lancet looked at data from 142 nations about time lost from work, insurance claims, health care billing, and other costs that the researchers determined were most likely caused by people being sedentary and now suffering from heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, breast cancer or colon cancer. Each of these conditions are much more common among people who do not exercise.

The study concluded that inactivity costs the world economy almost $68 billion annually in medical expenses and lost productivity. In the United States alone, the total was almost $28 billion. Most of the global costs were borne by governments and businesses, the authors write, but almost $10 billion worldwide was paid out of the pockets of individuals.

Now have you heard of the Annual Medical Expenditure Panel Survey? It’s a survey conducted by federal agencies, asks a large, representative group of Americans what they have spent on health care in the past year. The survey includes detailed questions about insurance coverage, prescription costs, doctor visits, hospitalizations, medical devices, other out-of-pocket spending, reimbursements, and so on.

Researchers took the results of this survey and they looked at how much each person had spent on health care in 2012 and whether being physically active had changed that outlay.

It turned out that it had, substantially. On average, someone who met the exercise guidelines paid $2,500 less in annual health care expenses related to heart disease than someone who did not walk or otherwise move for 30 minutes five times per week.

Those numbers included annual savings of about $400 on prescription medicines and far fewer emergency room visits and hospitalizations for people who regularly exercised.

The researchers arrived at these figures after controlling for insurance coverage, meaning that people with good insurance who did not meet the exercise guidelines paid more annually for their health care than those with skimpier coverage who regularly exercised.

The costs declined for exercisers even if they had been given a diagnosis of heart disease or had multiple risk factors for heart disease — such as high blood pressure and poor cholesterol profiles. If they met the exercise guidelines, they generally spent significantly less on annual health care than someone with heart disease or multiple risk factors who rarely worked out.

Overall, the data strongly suggests that being physically active is not only good for the body but it’s also good for the walled! So not moving can actually be costing you money!