Historical note: what's old is new again; exercise is medicine (1149.1)

In 2007, ACSM, AMA and the Surgeon General Office launched a national and international initiative to mobilize physicians, health care providers and professionals plus educators to promote and include exercise into their practices or activities to prevent, reduce, treat or manage diseases that impact health and the quality of life. Recently, ACSM issued a Position Stand recommending that healthy adults perform 150 min of moderate exercise per week. Although timely, admirable and needed, the initiative is not original as the basic concept has roots that began in antiquity (a time period that ended with the death of Galen in 210 AD). Specifically, the physician Susruta of India (600 B.C.E.) prescribed daily moderate exercise to his followers and patients for the purposes of promoting health, preventing corpulence, reducing diabetes, and improving appearances. He was followed by Hippocrates of Greece (480‐370 B.C.E) who was the first physician to provide a written exercise prescription for a patient suffering from consumption. He also promoted exercise to “ purge humors “ from body. Galen (129 ‐210 AD) of Rome should be remembered because he advocated exercise for diseases and conditions of consumption, depression, epilepsy, tuberculosis and vertigo. Furthermore, his views on the practice of medicine and on the role of exercise in the practice of medicine impacted Europe and the Arabic countries until the 16 th century.