Better infrastructure is needed for people to stay active, says Cork GP

Better infrastructure is needed to ensure our citizens can stay active in order to reduce reliance on public health services, a Cork GP and councillor has said.

It comes as a new report from the Irish Climate and Health Alliance, which is made up of more than 30 medical, health and social care professional organisations, has estimated that physical inactivity costs Ireland €1.13bn a year in healthcare.

Cork city GP and Fianna Fáil councillor John Sheehan told The Echo: “Physical activity is, other than not smoking, the biggest thing we can do to benefit our health.

Evidence

“All the evidence shows that it helps in terms of falls, diabetes, blood pressure, mental health — it all improves with getting active.

“The biggest benefit comes from that shift from doing very little to doing something, like going from driving all the time to walking 30 minutes or more. Further walking or jogging will add more value, but the biggest benefit is that first shift.”

Dr Sheehan explained that this factored into both his medical profession and his position as a councillor. “We have to be able to facilitate people to exercise, that means more greenways, walkways, cycleways — we need to make it much more conducive to get people out of the car and active.

“It’s very easy to tell people to exercise more, but if they have no safe place to do it then they can’t. We need to make public and active travel the default option rather than cars.

“We are very used to our cars, but it’s not sustainable environmentally or in terms of health, the city centre reached max traffic capacity five or six years ago so we need to look at different ways to get around.”