If a drug company could take all of the positive effects of exercise and put them into a pill, they’d be the most successful company in history. It is, in fact, nearly impossible to overstate the positive effects that regular exercise has on nearly every facet of the body’s physiological and the mind’s psychological state. Exercise has been demonstrated to not just slow the progression of, but to reverse, many of the symptoms of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, and hypertension. It can delay the onset of dementia, reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression disorders, and aid in smoking cessation programs.And yet when patients meet with their physicians, the overwhelming majority of primary care doctors fail to discuss the importance of exercise with patients. To the extent that the topic is discussed at all, the doctor will make, at best, passing remarks about the importance of an exercise program. Even more perversely, there is a strong correlation between lower economic class and decreased likelihood of physician-recommended exercise programs, despite the even stronger correlation between lower economic class and many of the diseases that exercise would most directly benefit (most notably obesity and type 2 diabetes). That is to say, those patients who most need regular exercise are the ones least likely to have a doctor that strongly recommends such a program.Why this connection exists is still somewhat unclear, although research is slowly shedding light on the topic. Fundamentally, public health scientists examine two different facets of the correlation: patient-sided factors and healthcare provider-sided factors. Thus, working and lower-class patients may not have access to the kind of doctors that will recommend exercise, or doctors may change how they treat patients based on perceived economic class.To date, research seems to suggest both of these factors work in concert. In a groundbreaking study at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, experimenters created audio recordings of over 5,000 patient-physician interactions for patients that were classified as obese. The patient population was categorized into three broad categories of economic class based on income. Researchers found that physicians were 22% more likely to discuss exercise regimens with the high-class patient group than the lowest, and that when exercise was discussed, doctors spent a staggering 420% more time in conversation about exercise with the high-economic class group than either the middle or low-class group. Despite these stark findings, the researchers’ failure to control for factors of ethnicity and gender have created large enough concerns about methodological validity to lead some critics to dismiss the study entirely.More promising are results obtained from examining the patient-sided factors, including frequency of patient-initiated discussions about exercise programs and patient access to high quality primary care. Here, surveys of both patients and healthcare workers have demonstrated a strong correlation between a patient’s economic class and their likelihood of initiating a conversation about exercise with their healthcare provider. This correlation seems to exist regardless of the health status of the patient, and any similarities between the patient and provider in terms of demographic categories. The findings suggest, perhaps, that patients from higher-economic classes are simply more comfortable initiating conversations with their healthcare professionals.A final irony was revealed in the most recent major study published on the topic, which found no correlation between a patient’s ability to start and stick with an exercise regimen and how frequently such programs were discussed with healthcare professionals. Question 1In the study discussed in the paragraph 4, the researchers created audio recordings of the doctor-patient interactions in order to: A.prove that physicians unconsciously discriminate against lower-class patients by not discussing exercise with them.B.determine differences in doctor-patient interactions when the doctor and patient are of the same or of different ethnicities.C.ascertain whether doctors were more likely to discuss exercise regimens with obese male patients than with obese female patients.D.assess both how often exercise was discussed and for how much time it was discussed