You can feel it all around you - in the office, at the store, in a restaurant, and at home; it's May, and it's time to get active! Warmer weather is upon us, and we feel rejuvenated with an abundance of energy. What better time than May for Exercise is Medicine (EIM) Month and National Physical Fitness and Sports Month? Let's use this gift of increased energy and warmer weather to be more physically active.

EIM Month was launched in 2008 to celebrate May as a time for health care providers, fitness professionals, the public, and supporting organizations and constituents to recognize, emphasize and celebrate the valuable health benefits of exercise on a national scale.

Over the past few years, almost all 50 states, many cities, organizations and even some military bases have celebrated health and fitness in May by hosting a variety of organized events requiring physical activity to get people moving. This year we hope to involve every state!

Exercise is Medicine Month Spotlight

Art Anderssen's Wet 'n' Dry Fitness 'n' Fun, located in Punta Gorda, Florida, kicked off their EIM Month activities early this year. Their Dragon Boat team, the Drippin' Dragons, supported Exercise is Medicine Month while the EIM Network logo was emblazoned on the front of their team shirts during the 2nd Annual Dragon Boat Festival held on April 14. Punta Gorda issued its EIM Month proclamation on May 2nd,following Charlotte County's proclamation on April 24th.

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Be Active in May

A lot of great information was shared at the Health & Fitness Summit & Exposition this year. Here's a glimpse of what participants learned from the many topics presented. You might want to consider trying some of these when planning physical activities this month and beyond.

• Eccentric exercise and "going negative" in fitness routines: Instead of just putting the emphasis on curling or contracting motions, focus on slowly straightening or lowering the muscle. This technique can help you push through a training plateau. Examples of "eccentric exercise" include some of the following: walking downhill, doing single leg squats on an incline leg press or tricep dip on a bench, or doing a back extension on a Roman chair. This style of training can be good for injury protection. If you're injured, it can still be used on the healthy limb.
• Trends in high performance training: High-intensity interval training (HIIT) and conditioning is in demand. Two weeks of HIIT - that's alternate bursts of high- or low-intensity energy levels - improves your aerobic capacity the same amount as doing 6-8 weeks of endurance training. Incorporate HIIT to help build muscle and speed weight loss. During HIIT, a person consumes more oxygen than during slower, distance exercising. This can increase post-exercise metabolism, and research has actually shown that one session of HIIT can burn calories for 1.5 - 2.4 hours after exercise.
• Be More Active and Less Inactive: Adults in the US spend 60% of their waking time being sedentary, mainly sitting. Even adults who exercise do not meet the recommendations for daily physical activity. Throughout the day, find opportunities to reduce the time spent sitting. Stand up during phone calls or while sending emails, walk more, take the stairs, and park further away from places you're going. Increased interruptions in sedentary time have added benefits.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Building a Fit Nation

Capping May as the month of both Physical Fitness and Sports Month and Exercise is Medicine Month, Dr. Sanjay Gupta will speak May 30 at the 59th ACSM Annual Meeting and 3rd World Congress on Exercise is Medicine. Dr. Gupta, CNN's multiple Emmy award-winning chief medical correspondent, will speak on "Using the Power of the Media to Help Build a Fit Nation."

How are you celebrating Exercise is Medicine Month? Share your story with us!

Like a lively puppy that is thriving, joyously active and everywhere at once, Let's Move! has energized America with no sign of slowing down. In just a year, First Lady Michelle Obama's initiative has prompted families, individuals and organizations to take health into their own hands. Collectively, we're eating better and finding ways to be more physically active. It adds up to healthier lifestyles for a whole spectrum of people and reflects encouraging momentum in the fight against childhood obesity.

As more and more of us connect the dots - through Let's Move!, the National Physical Activity Plan, Exercise is Medicine (EIM) and countless other initiatives - we're helping the movement mature. Recounting success stories and lessons learned lets us share best practices. EIM on Campus connects colleges and universities with one another, but also with their local communities. Groups like the National Society of Physical Activity Practitioners in Public Health allow professionals to learn from one another and share resources.

We're learning not only from one another, but from new research about exercise, nutrition, physiology and motivation. This is essential to make sure our programs and policies will be effective. From molecular-level, basic science to studies of group interaction and epidemiology, new knowledge is providing a solid base of evidence to underpin our efforts.

Similarly, approaches to healthier lifestyles range from the granular to the global. We know that every bite we consume, every calorie expended, brings with it a health impact. Individual actions become habits, with immense effects on individuals over time. Family members influence one another, and whole communties can gain a collective consciousness or identity around healthy lifestyles (think Portland, Oregon, where bicycling is a shared passion).

A spectrum of solutions

Some of us emphasize physical activity and exercise, but we know that's just one factor in the health equation. Nutrition plays a huge role, as do tobacco and alcohol use, air quality and more. We've learned that all these elements must work together, and that healthy behaviors must become part of our everyday lives to be effective. And their adoption requires the kind of one-on-one modeling that happens in families, classrooms and circles of friends - but also the collective action that is reflected in organizational and community policies.

The vision reflects the range of benefits, from individual health and quality of life to societal gains in worker productivity and reduced health care costs. We're getting there, thanks to a growing foundation of research, immeasurable individual effort, and the unstoppable enthusiasm of initiatives like Let's Move.

How do your efforts complement the work of Let's Move!, the National Physical Activity Plan and other initiatives?

How can we activate more people to "think globally; act locally" to foster healthier lifestyles?

Given today's societal awareness of obesity and, to lesser a degree, the related chronic diseases, my sense is that most fitness marketing focuses, implicitly or explicitly, on the physical health benefits of exercise. The work of behavior economists, however, suggests that humans are more attracted to short-term gains than long-term gains, which presents profound challenges for marketing the health benefits of exercise programs. As Cornell University Professor John Cawley recently noted at a Campaign to End Obesity event, it's hard to get a 35-year old man to take actions today that might extend the end of his life some 40 or 50 years down the road.

Marketing angles such as, "Extend Your Life Expectancy by 10 Years," are certainly compelling, and may impact a few New Year's resolutions, but probably would not get the majority of Americans out of bed at 6 am for an early morning workout.

We know that exercise is wonderful medicine. And if it were in a pill form, "it would be the most prescribed wonder drug in history." But, unfortunately, exercise is not only medicine, it's also considered work by most people - and humans prefer that work be rewarded sooner rather than later.

To further complicate marketing efforts, many of the health benefits of exercise are prevention-focused, which means that a person may need to feel susceptible to a disease before appreciating the preventive benefits of exercise.

Of course, the physical benefits of exercise are powerful and immediate, and should be trumpeted in marketing efforts to parents and children, but there is another very compelling message that often seems overlooked by marketing and promotion teams.

And it's a message that should be very attractive to parents.

Exercise improves mental performance. Very quickly.

It can, for example, improve your memory, increase your ability to perform complex tasks, increase your auditory and visual attention and, perhaps most significantly, reduce stress and anxiety.

According to Dr. John Ratey, author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Education and the Brain, "There's sort of no question about it now. The exercise itself doesn't make you smarter, but it puts the brain of the learners in the optimal position for them to learn."

For example, a recent study suggests that 30 minutes on a treadmill may improve student performance on problem-solving exercises by 10%.

I believe the mental health benefits of exercise present profound and underutilized marketing opportunities for physical activity providers.

Just imagine the taglines...

• "Improve Your Child's Test Scores"
• "Be Happier Today"
• "Feel Smarter in Just 30 Minutes"
• "Be More Productive at Work"
• "Improve Your Memory"
  

Taglines like these are aimed directly at some of the most fundamental aspirations of our culture. Yet these are benefits not generally associated with exercise. As more parents come to understand the mental health benefits of exercise, for their children and for themselves, I believe the culture of physical activity will grow exponentially.

Is your organization promoting the mental health benefits of exercise? What works?