"Hiking, Among Hiking, Walking, Running, and Cycling, Has the Greatest Health Improvement Effect"

[Asia Economy Reporter Eunmo Koo] As age increases, the population engaging in hiking is higher than those running or cycling, and hiking has a greater impact on health compared to walking, running, or cycling, according to an analysis.

The Personal Information Protection Commission, together with the Korea Forest Service's National Institute of Forest Science, announced on the 26th the results of an "Analysis of Customized Forest Healing Programs" containing these findings.

This case is the first pseudonymized data linkage case in the field of forest healing using the Korea Forestry Promotion Institute's forest big data platform. To analyze the health improvement effects by exercise type, the National Institute of Forest Science pseudonymized and linked about 80,000 exercise data from the National Health Insurance Service's medical big data and the exercise data held by the big data solution company "Beagle."

Pseudonymized information refers to data where parts of personal information are deleted or replaced so that individuals cannot be identified without combining additional information. By linking and analyzing different pseudonymized data in this way, new information can be derived.

First, analyzing exercise activities by age group showed that as age increases, hiking is the most frequently performed exercise among hiking, walking, running, and cycling.

The hiking exercise rates by age were 14% for teenagers, 28% for those in their 20s, 31% for their 30s, 35% for their 40s, and 38% for those in their 50s to 70s. In contrast, running exercise rates decreased with age: 19% for teenagers, 15% for those in their 20s, 9% for their 30s, 6% for their 40s, 5% for their 50s, 4% for their 60s, and 0.6% for those in their 70s. From the 30s onward, walking and hiking were the main exercise activities, while teenagers mostly walked, and those in their 20s cycled the most.

Additionally, examining the relationship between exercise activities and health indicators, the Personal Information Protection Commission and the National Institute of Forest Science explained that hiking had the greatest impact on health among exercise activities.

For all exercises, as exercise amount and frequency increased, most health indicators such as blood pressure, cholesterol, and fasting blood glucose stabilized within normal ranges, and medical burdens such as hospital visits, inpatient days, and total medical expenses tended to decrease. In particular, health indicators like weight, body mass index, and waist circumference showed greater improvement effects from hiking frequency and distance compared to other exercises.

The National Institute of Forest Science plans to conduct in-depth analysis of the effects of exercising in forests on health through future research on forest big data such as green space ratio and forest area, and the Korea Forest Service plans to develop national health promotion measures and preventive policies utilizing forests.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.