For those who refuse to listen to reason, a trip to the GP can be salutary.

On a good day, it can even be sobering. Those routine questions are not intended as an interrogation, but if honesty is prodded into life and the look you take at yourself is long and hard, no harm is caused. Quite the reverse.

You still smoke? You drink - now think carefully - how much? In a country such as Scotland, with its woeful collective medical history, its near-suicidal "social" habits, and its bizarre bravado in the face of grim reality, the inquiries are as essential as they are effective. They work. Among the health strategies designed to improve our self-awareness, a few simple questions can work wonders.

Which questions? If those who campaign for our wellbeing were each given a say, it would be a very long list. Given the toll the substances inflict, tobacco and alcohol queries obviously form part of any health assessment. But a report issued today by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow argues, implicitly and explicitly, that a trick has been missed.

How could anyone overlook what the Chief Medical Officer has described as Scotland's fourth biggest killer, a direct cause of 2,500 deaths a year at a cost of £660 million, a curse that the Lancet calls a pandemic, one that is claiming five million lives annually around the planet? What do we say to a problem that is as lethal as smoking, one for which cheap, simple remedies exist, each capable of preventing 40 different illnesses, from type 2 diabetes to heart attacks to certain cancers?

No doubt we say: "Let's get to it. Let's have those cheap and simple answers." If that is the response, the medical profession points out that there is no hindrance. This miracle is called physical activity. With only a very few exceptions, it is open to all. Its effects are transformational. The Royal College suggests merely that GPs and hospitals include questions on the subject in their assessments, no doubt while many of us shift uncomfortably in our chairs.

In this, ironically, Scotland is doing better than might have been expected. Recent sporting events might have had something to do with that, but levels of physical activity are rising at a time when much of the world is exerting itself less than ever before. Needless to say, the fact provides no grounds for complacency. The evidence for the benefits of simple exercise is now substantial and Scots need to do more.

If 30 minutes of physical activity can reduce the risk of early death by 30 per cent, the effort involved in answering a few questions honestly is well spent. First, however, the questions need to be asked. As the college argues, this ought to be routine within the NHS.

Slowly but surely, smoking is being defeated. The indolent Scot, busy doing nothing and falling ill for his and her pains, should not be so hard to shift.