The economic burden of physical inactivity at national level

Abstract

The reason for the appearance and increasing prevalence of inactivity-related diseases is that people have developed all of the technical achievements in order to make life easier and more comfortable, which resulted in physical inactivity at a social level. Physical inactivity can be a risk factor of many diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, stroke, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, obesity, hypertension or stress-related diseases. According to WHO estimates, physical inactivity accounts for 3.3 million deaths, making it the fourth leading cause of death in the world. The treatment of these diseases represents a significant proportion of health expenditures, which imposes a huge burden on the countries, including Hungary. In our article, we introduce the data regarding the costs of physical inactivity-related diseases in different countries, particularly focusing on cardiovascular diseases. We also point out that physical activity can not completely compensate the sedentary lifestyle (long-lasting sitting or rest) either, so long-lasting sitting can be a significant risk factor of various cardiovascular diseases. During our research activity, we consider the implementation of interdisciplinary collab-orations extremely important, which can lead to modelling healthcare costs along various variables as a result of the collaboration of specialists from several areas (economics, medicine and sports sciences).