The developing understanding of Human Health and Fitness: 9. The Post-Modern Era

Abstract

This final segment in this history of health and fitness looks at the Post-Modern Era, through to the year 2012. New form of technology such as the metabolic cart, signal averagers and echocardiograms, isokinetic torque recorders, needle biopsy, automated cell sorting and counting and gene sequencers now speed research in many areas of exercise science, kinesiology, exercise biochemistry and exercise immunology. Recent politicians have shown a varying personal interest in physical fitness. Several recent American leaders have played team sports, but in Canada some of our leaders have shown a greater interest in outdoor recreation than in sport. The increasing longevity of Western populations speaks to their better overall health. An earlier epidemic of cardiovascular disease has now been partially contained, but it has given place to a growing prevalence of obesity. The Lalonde Report, the Romanow Commission, the Ottawa Charter and a series of consensus conferences have clarified many of the relationships between physical activity and disease prevention, and several North American journals now examine details of these relationships. Occupational health and cardiac rehabilitation programmes have attracted growing interest, and the U.S. finally has introduced a scheme for nation-wide health insurance. Canadian contributions to the study of fitness over the past 50 years have included the standardization of exercise test methodology, and coordination of the physiologic work capacity component of the International Biological Programme Human Adaptability Project. Exercise scientists have underlined the safety of appropriately prescribed physical activity for most of the world