On the occasion of the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of Quiero Saber Salud, the initiative shared the lessons learned from the pandemic for self-care in order to continue promoting health among Mexicans.
Dr. Rafael Álvarez Cordero, director of the initiative, highlighted in his presentation that despite the public health crisis represented by the arrival of Covid-19, humanity managed to resume a series of lessons for the prevention of future outbreaks of viral diseases.
“The most important learning that will help us prevent future illnesses and even new waves of Covid-19 is self-care as a key element in health care. We are responsible for our health, diet, exercise and emotional balance that we have” commented Dr. Álvarez.
Being exercise, one of the necessary aspects and that during the trans-pandemic was significantly reduced due, among other causes, to the recommendation of confinement. In estimated appreciations, it is considered that in the most critical stages of the pandemic, physical activation decreased by up to 80%, which in itself always presents low endemic levels, if one takes into account that only 24-26% pre-pandemic of the population was activated more or less regularly.
This decrease in physical activity had great consequences regarding the deterioration of the health of Mexicans, since the lack of movement aggravated pre-existing pathologies and generally deteriorated the physical condition of people who followed strict confinement.
In this sense, Nutritionist Mónica Hurtado, co-founder of the initiative, presented the results of the survey that was applied during the Walk for Health “Let’s recover from PostCOVID” on World Diabetes Day, where it was found that 51% of the people surveyed do less than 3 days of physical activity or do not do it and only 23.4% do 5 or more days a week.
On the other hand, 53.2% of people consume a meal prior to physical activity; while 21% do not, indicating that there is a lack of knowledge of the type of food that can be more useful prior to physical activation. People know that physical activity is essential to treat diabetes; however, 50% do not perform enough activity to maintain health despite knowing its importance and do not regularly monitor their glucose levels.
In a questionnaire applied to students of the Emiliano Zapata Technological University (UTEZ) Morelos on “Habits and Energy Balance” it was found that the respondents consider the relationship between physical activity and nutrition very important; however, only 6% consider that they have an adequate energy balance and 94% do not consider it or think that sometimes.
75% of students do not perform enough physical activity for good health, despite considering it very important for it. In addition, only 23.5% consider having a healthy weight, the rest do not know or do not consider it.
Given the results presented, both Dr. Rafael Álvarez and Nutritionist Mónica Hurtado agreed on the importance of highlighting the energy balance, that is, ingesting the same amount of energy that we expend. That is why the specialists made a call to maintain adequate levels of physical activity and to establish the culture of exercise as a preventive measure, this in the face of future pandemics or perhaps in the face of possible new waves of Covid-19.