Ancient India Exercise is Medicine

1. EXERCISE IS MEDICINE

2. • What is Exercise is Medicine?
• Exercise is Medicine® (EIM), a global health initiative managed by the
American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), encourages primary care
physicians and other health care providers to include physical activity when
designing treatment plans and to refer patients to evidence-based exercise
programs and qualified exercise professionals, especially those with the EIM
credential.
• EIM is committed to the belief that physical activity promotes optimal
health, is integral in the prevention and treatment of many medical
conditions, and should be regularly assessed and included as part of health
care.
• Definitions provided by http://www.exerciseismedicine.org/

3. In ancient India in 600 BCE there was a physician named Sushruta.
He taught medicine and surgery at a university in Benares, India.
He was a huge advocate of physical exercise and fitness to prevent
health related problems and constantly included them in his
teachings to his students.
Sushruta was a very well known surgeon among India and was
extremely successful. He is one of the first advocates of the
exercise is medicine following.

4. • Sushruta stated that “diseases fly from the presence of a person
habituated to regular physical exercise”
• He was concerned that individuals who consumed too much food,
slept too long, and remained sedentary would become corpulent,
a condition that he associated with a variety of diseases.
• He then started to write prescriptions of exercise to help treat
obesity as he saw it started to rise among his people and his
patients.

5. In this figure it shows different concepts from ancient civilizations or
cultures that contributed to the emergence of Exercise Is Medicine.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4056176/table/T1/?report=objectonl
y

6. • Sushruta regarded diabetes as a curable disease for which he
prescribed diet and exercise.
• However, exercise was not prescribed for the noncureable form
of diabetes known as “mahu-meha”
• Sushruta also believed that too strenuous or heavy physical
activity, would cause multiple diseases and potentially lead to
death so he discouraged patients from being “too active”

7. • Several centuries later, documents of the physician Caraka
suggested the same things as Sushruta and he followed in his
exact footsteps.
• Carkaka changed his thought on diabetes and he believed that
the only “cure” for diabetes was heavy strenuous exercise.

8. • Exercise is Medicine is still something that fitness professionals
are strongly trying to implements into treatment plans and
medicine field today. These doctors I found are some of the first
to implement prescription medicine exercise for what are still the
stop problems in our society today. I found this article to be still
extremely relevant because it shows how “new” exercise is to us
still and how we have still yet to fully implement it into our
society and use to to help treat people. Even though this was
being done long ago. Exercise is Medicine is something that all
fitness professionals should be fighting for and trying to force to
be implemented into the medical and medicine field.

9. References
1. “Exercise Is Medicine.” Exercise Is Medicine, 4 Apr. 2018,
www.exerciseismedicine.org/.
2. “Exercise Is Medicine” Tipton, Charles M. Advances in
Education, American Physiological Society, June 2014,
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4056176/table/T1/?repo
t=objectonly.
3. Tipton, Charles M. “The History of ‘Exercise Is Medicine’ in
Ancient Civilizations.” Advances in Physiology Education,
American Physiological Society, June 2014,
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4056176/.