No surprise: exercise as good as meds

Exercise can be as good a medicine as pills, a British Medical Journal (BMJ) study has found. Researchers looked at hundreds of trials involving nearly 340,000 patients to assess the merits of exercise and drugs in preventing death. Physical activity rivaled some heart drugs and outperformed stroke medicine.

Too few adults currently get enough exercise. In contrast, prescription drug rates continue to rise.

When the researchers studied the data as a whole, they found exercise and drugs were comparable in terms of death rates. But there were two exceptions. Drugs called diuretics were the clear winner for heart failure patients, while exercise was best for stroke patients in terms of life expectancy.