India Has Been Named Among Laziest Countries In The World, Here's What It Can Do Remain Active

Scientists used phone data to find out which are the laziest and most active countries in the world, and they found out that India is one of the laziest countries in the world. They analysed around 700,000 people around the world to see how many steps they took every day, and their study is the result of 68 million days of information.

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Hong Kong came at the top as the most healthy country, where citizens on average take 6,880 per day, where as Indonesia came the bottom, with 3,513 steps.

India, though not the laziest, did fair in the top 10, coming in at number 8, with 4,297 steps. Here is what it can do for its citizens to become more active.

Walkability

A city¡¯s walkability determined how many steps people took a day. Better pavements, last-mile connectivity contributed to the number of steps people take. The study found that a country with a good infrastructure and walkways, had higher walkability and more people preferred to walk no matter their age, sex or obesity.

Scott Delp, a professor of bioengineering, who worked on the study published in the journal Nature, told the BBC, ¡°The study is 1,000 times larger than any previous study on human movement.

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¡°There have been wonderful health surveys done, but our new study provides data from more countries, many more subjects, and tracks people's activity on an ongoing basis.

¡°This opens the door to new ways of doing science at a much larger scale than we have been able to do before.¡±

Activity Inequality

One would think that the number of steps directly correlate to obesity but researchers found thus was not the case. Instead, activity inequality ¨C that is, the difference between the active and the non-active ¨C reflects figures of obesity better.

They told the BBC that the bigger the gap, the more obese people in the country.

Tim Althoff, a PhD candidate in computer science who was involved in the research, said, ¡°For instance, Sweden had one of the smallest gaps between activity rich and activity poor... it also had one of the lowest rates of obesity.¡±

And even though the USA and Mexico had similar average steps, America had greater activity inequality and so more obesity.

Anonymity of participants was maintained and the data was collected using the Argus app on the participants¡¯ cell phones to track their everyday activities.

Gender at play

Researchers also found that activity inequality was a result of differences between men and women. Men and women exercised in relatively similar amounts in countries with low inequality and obesity, such as Japan.

However, in countries like Saudi Arabia and India, activity inequality led to more inactivity among the women.

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Another researcher behind the study, Jure Leskovec, said, ¡°When activity inequality is greatest, women's activity is reduced much more dramatically than men's activity, and thus the negative connections to obesity can affect women more greatly.¡±

Therefore, India must rise up and do something to become more active.

Other countries in the top 10 most lazy list included Malaysia, South Africa and Qatar.