Most people would assume that heart disease is worse than not exercising, but a new study is challenging that idea.

The study came out in the JAMA Network Open journal and basically revealed that not exercising is at least on the same line as heart disease. The study was done over a course of 23 years and 122,007 patients. Their testing occurred at Ohio's Cleveland Clinic.

Researchers found that people with sedentary lifestyles had a five-hundred percent higher risk associated with death than those who qualified as top exercise performers. People who exercised on a minimal level ended up having improved results but still had a 390 percent higher risk associated with death when compared to the optimal choice.

What this means is that when we don't exercise, it actually worsens our chances of being healthy in the long run as there's little to nothing going against the unhealthy diseases attacking someone.

According to the Daily Mail, the research also stated that people who did not do well on the treadmill test were found to have almost twice the health risks. This was when they were compared to those on kidney failure dialysis.

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Via Harvard Health

The study kind of points out the obvious on a superficial level but then makes you think how unhealthy you truly are. It's unique and really does shed some light on a subject that many people overlook.

It also has the power to alter how people think about the issue of exercise. It does this because it's comparing their lifestyle to things that have almost always been considered negative for the human body. In short, the researchers say that things like smoking are not as bad as what they're doing to themselves.

The main issue that some people are going to find with the study is that it was not conducted on an international scale. Meaning, while this may be the case with North America, how does it hold up in Europe? So, it is safe to say that something similar should also be conducted in other parts of the world. This could then lead to recommendations on how to prevent this in parts of the world that are heavily sedentarized.

NEXT: SCIENCE SAYS DAILY NAPS ARE ESSENTIAL TO BEING HEALTHY