It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
A lack of exercise is now causing as many deaths as smoking across the world, a study suggests.
The report, published in the Lancet to coincide with the build-up to the Olympics, estimates that about a third of adults are not doing enough physical activity, causing 5.3m deaths a year.
That equates to about one in 10 deaths from diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and breast and colon cancer.
Researchers said the problem was now so bad it should be treated as a pandemic.
And they said tackling it required a new way of thinking, suggesting the public needed to be warned about the dangers of inactivity rather than just reminded of the benefits of it.
The team of 33 researchers drawn from centres across the world also said governments needed to look at ways to make physical activity more convenient, affordable and safer.
From Monday to Saturday, the streets of the Colombian capital of Bogota are packed with cars.
The city - one of the largest in South America - is a teeming metropolis, home to more than seven million people.
But on a Sunday vehicles are nowhere to be seen. Instead, the streets are taken over by pedestrians, thanks to Ciclovia, a traffic-free streets initiative run by the city authorities.
The scheme, backed by successive mayors, has been running in one guise or another since the mid-1970s.
It now covers nearly 100km of roads in the centre of the city on Sundays and public holidays.
It is recommended that adults do 150 minutes of moderate exercise, such as brisk walking, cycling or gardening, each week.