Stanford scientists: the most active citizens in China, Japan, Ukraine and Russia

The problem of obesity , cardiovascular and other diseases, the cause of which is a sedentary lifestyle and overeating, is probably one of the main problems of our time. It used to be that the most obese citizens are in the UK and the USA, although in fact the leading countries for obesity of their inhabitants are Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. But in which countries do people lead the most active lifestyle? It is not so easy to learn, but it is possible. For several years, scientists from Stanford decided to find out which citizens are moving the most.

In their work, experts used the information accumulated by the Azumio Argus cloud fitness app. Among other functions, this program allows you to find out how active the lifestyle is its user. Experts analyzed a massive sample of information on 717.5 thousand people from 111 countries. Scientists followed the physical activity of all these people for 95 days. Azumio Argus user data is anonymized, although scientists see parameters such as age, height, gender, and weight of a person.

So, it turned out that people lead the most sedentary lifestyle in Indonesia. Here, users of the application walk approximately 3513 steps per day. They are followed by citizens of Saudi Arabia with their 3807 steps, Malaysia (3963 steps), the Philippines (4008) and South Africa (4105).
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The list of countries whose inhabitants are the most active and take more steps than citizens of other states is:

1. Hong Kong - 6880 steps per day.
2. China - 6189.
3. Ukraine - 6107.
4. Japan - 6010.
5. Russia - 5969.
6. Spain - 5936.
7. Sweden - 5863.
8. South Korea - 5755.
9. Singapore - 5674.
10. Switzerland - 5512.

In addition, scientists also tried to find out how the attitude of active users to citizens, who barely move, differs in each of the countries.



“If you imagine that some people are“ rich in physical activity ”and other“ poor ”, then the gap between the first and second is an excellent indicator of the possible level of obesity in such a community,” said one of the authors of the study, Scott Delp. Interestingly, Saudi Arabia (32.2), Australia (30.4) and Canada (30.3) are the countries with the lowest inequality. Slightly lower levels of Hong Kong (index 22.2), China with an index of 24.4 and Sweden (24.6), with South Korea (24.7) and the Czech Republic (24.8). Here the smaller the number, the lower the obesity rate in the country.

In addition, interesting results have also been obtained in relation to "sexual inequality". That is, in some countries, men are more active, in some - women. In most countries, men are still more physically active than women. At the same time, the largest gap between the levels of physical activity of men and women is in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. But the most insignificant difference - in Sweden, Ukraine and Russia. The data of their research, scientists posted on a specially created page .



An interesting point in the study is that the average number of steps in a country is weakly correlated with the spread of obesity among residents of this country. But then there is a direct link between "inequality" and the level of obesity, as indicated above. Another aspect of the study is the availability of conditions for pedestrians in various cities. If there are a lot of roads and cars in the village, then pedestrians there have more difficulties, respectively, and the level of activity of city residents (only cities were evaluated) is lower. True, in some cities there are many roads and cars, but the infrastructure provides for the possibility of walking. Among a number of cities in the United States, San Francisco was recognized as one of the most convenient for pedestrians, which is in fourth place in the United States by this indicator.

According to scientists, this type of research is easy to conduct due to the abundance of data. The fact is that the vast majority of the population of cities, especially large ones, carry smartphones with them. The latter are often equipped with various kinds of fitness applications that record the number of steps taken, the total distance and other factors. This became possible due to the presence of gyroscopes, GPS, wireless communication modules and other elements of the phone design. The collected data, the researchers unloaded on Github .

Many smartphone users also own various “smart” devices like fitness trackers. They are used to more accurately monitor their own physical activity. Now most trackers are equipped, besides the usual elements, also with heart rate monitors. As a result, information about the physical load of a person is used not only by the users themselves, but also by employers, insurance companies and other organizations.