Open AccessScoring Lifestyle Medicine Goals With FIFA 2022—An Opportunity to Strike Big!
Author(s) -
Sathyanarayanan Doraiswamy,
Sohaila Cheema,
Javaid I. Sheikh,
Ravinder Mamtani
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
american journal of lifestyle medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.404
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1559-8284
pISSN - 1559-8276
DOI - 10.1177/15598276211026590
Subject(s) - medicine , tipping point (physics) , non communicable disease , lifestyle medicine , sports medicine , economic growth , physical therapy , public health , nursing , family medicine , engineering , electrical engineering , economics
Qatar is one of the few countries in the world with a dedicated national sports day. Qatar believes that sport is one of the best tools to promote a healthy lifestyle to help curb the growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). With the well-established positive health effects of soccer on cardiovascular, metabolic, and musculoskeletal conditions, the vision of the FIFA World Cup 2022™ hosted by Qatar to use the power of soccer to “open the door of an amazing world experience” is praiseworthy. With NCDs accounting for 70% of deaths in Qatar, there exists a perfect opportunity to promote healthy lifestyles to prevent, treat, and reverse NCDs. We believe that the FIFA World Cup 2022™ presents an opportunity that could contribute to generating valuable evidence on the lifestyle benefits of such large-scale events. This event comes at an opportune moment for countries in the region to make their health systems lifestyle-sensitive. FIFA World Cup 2022™ could just be the tipping point in the region that establishes the role of sports in mitigating the burden of NCDs. With the impact of COVID-19 on persons with pre-existing NCDs, the urgency for addressing the “syndemic” cannot be overemphasized and sport can be the lifestyle medicine.