Health Benefits of Physical Activity and Nutrition

HEALTH BENEFITS OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND NUTRITION
Health Benefits of Physical Activity and Nutrition
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1HEALTH BENEFITS OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND NUTRITION
Abstract
The physical exercise and nutrition are two of the important non-pharmacological
interventions that are used in the healthcare domain. Following paper aims to conduct review
of literature in order to examine the importance of physical exercise and healthy diet plan in
improving comprehensive health outcome of the individuals. The study reviewed seven
papers that are published online within the past 5 years. The review of literature showed that
physical exercise and nutritional activities help in improving overall health related outcome
of the patients. Regular practice of physical activity and healthy diet plan helps to reduce the
chances of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases while improving the prognosis of cancer. These
interventions also helped in improving mental health outcomes. Use of proper mobile-based
interventions can help in improving the awareness about the physical exercise and nutritional
status.
Keywords: Physical activity, physical exercise, nutrition, diet, health, health outcomes

2HEALTH BENEFITS OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND NUTRITION
Title: Health Benefits of Physical Activity and Nutrition
Introduction
Physical exercise and diet are regarded as two of the important healthy lifestyle haits
that are used as non-pharmacological interventions. According to the World Health
Organization (2019), unhealthy diet plan and sedentary life are the principal factors behind
high rate of occurrence of non-communicable diseases globally (Plotnikoff et al., 2015). The
following review of literature will help in analyzing a detail perspective of how healthy diet
plan and nutritional support can help in promoting overall quality of life by increasing the
health benefits. In other words, it can be said that the literature review will be based on the
thesis statement: physical activity and nutrition helps in increasing the health benefits.
Review of Literature
In order to conduct the review, the first step that is required to be undertaken is search
of the literary articles. According to Parahoo (2014) during the search of the literacy articles,
there must be specific inclusion and exclusion criteria as this helps to reduce the time of
reducing the data redundancy. The main inclusion and exclusion criteria used for this review
is highlighted in the table below
Inclusion Criteria Exclusion Criteria
Papers published on or after 2015 Papers published before 2015
Papers published in English Papers published other than English
Both primary and secondary papers
Peered reviewed articles

3HEALTH BENEFITS OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND NUTRITION
The main databases that are used for the search of the search of the articles are
Cochrane, MedLine, PubMed and PsychInfo. Parahoo (2014) stated that in order to refine the
process of database search and to increase the number of relevant hits in the database, use of
proper keywords is important. Here are keywords are used along with Boolean search
operators in order to increase the more combinational keywords.
Primary Keywords Boolean search
operator
Secondary Keywords
Physical Activity OR Physical exercise
Boolean search
operators
AND AND
Nutrition OR Healthy Diet
Boolean search
operators
AND
Health outcomes OR Holistic Health OR
Improved lifestyle
The search of the databases highlighted 7 articles that coincided with the scope of the study
over which the review is conducted.
In order to understand the importance of health-benefits of physical activity and
nutrition, Plotnikoff et al. (2015) conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis over 41
studies that studied the health benefits of physical activity and nutrition over college students.
The papers that were published during the tenure of 1970 to 2014 were specifically selected
for the research. The narrative synthesis and meta-analysis of the data highlighted that out of
41 studies, 34 studies reported significant improvement in the overall health-related quality of