If people
would realize how many health benefits exercise can offer, there would
be no hesitation in getting started with some form of exercise.
Especially older folks are harder to get motivated, because they
think the exercise will cause an injury. On the contrary, exercise will
keep their overall fitness level and muscle strength in optimal form.
It's a matter of choosing the right form of exercise.
Swimming, walking and gardening are very suitable for older people.
Swimming has the advantage that their body weight will be partly
supported by the water, which makes it possible to exercise without
risking any bodily harm.
Walking is the best exercise you can have, because it's natural. Good
long brisk walks give a lot of benefits- the whole body begins to
respond. You breath properly, your circulation and heart benefits, and
it's good for the mind and positive thinking.
It's only in recent years that fitness gurus have recognized the
supremacy of brisk walking. In contrary to jogging, brisk walking
provides a lot of benefits without any problems. Walking is almost as
important as the right food. You need to eat properly and exercise
properly, the two together gives you the best results. The internal
organs of the body need tone and for this most of them depend almost
entirely on physical activity.
Exercise produces big results whether we’re 40, 60 or 80. According
to the Human Physiology Laboratory at Tufts University Human Nutrition
Research Center on Aging, we respond well to exercise at any age.
Muscles grow, bones strengthen, and metabolism increases. Our body fat
decreases while blood sugar and balance improve. I proved this to myself
when I taught strength training at a retirement residence. With modest
effort, exercisers in their 80s grew stronger and more vital. We were
all delighted. Reduced muscle strength is associated with age-related
disability. The most common cause of muscle weakness is inactivity.
After three months of high-intensity muscle training, healthy men over
60 experienced gains similar to those reported for younger men training
with similar intensity and duration. People who were stronger remained
more independent and less burdened by advancing years. Any type of
exercise helps, but combining aerobics, strength, and flexibility works
best. For most people, aerobic exercise is an easy place to begin.
As we breathe deeply, the diaphragm – which separates the chest from
the abdomen – rises and falls repeatedly, massaging all the internal
organs, particularly the stomach, small intestine, bowel, lungs and
liver. The stretching and relaxing of the intestines is vital in
preventing that widespread form of 'self poisoning' : constipation.
Exercise does keep you regular!
In the mid-eighties, a vital clue to the right exercise for lifelong
health was uncovered by brilliant research in biochemistry. Biochemists
established that all cell replication in the immune system and therefore
all immune strength is dependent on availability of the amino acid
glutamine. Your immune system uses a ton of it. But immune cells cannot
make glutamine. Only muscle cells can do the job. So your muscles have
to supply large amounts of glutamine to your immune system every day in
order to maintain it. That's it! The mitochondria of muscle are the
furnaces in which most of your body fat and sugar are burned for fuel.
Muscle is what stresses your skeleton to maintain your bones. We also
know that muscle is the vital link which also maintain your immunity and
hence your resistance to all diseases. Muscle is the health engine.
Which so much overwhelming evidence that muscular exercise is essential
to health, what are we doing about it? A big fat zero.
Muscle is the health engine. It's a proven fact that the right
exercise not only maintains your heart, your lungs, your muscles, your
bones, a healthy level of body fat and even your intestinal function,
but also some more subtle functions, like insulin and your body's
dealing with sugar. It has been known for more than fifty years that
lack of exercise leads to glucose intolerance.
However, not long ago research has shown that getting of the couch
and start moving, not only maintain insulin function to deal with the
sugar, but it also can reverse decades of damage. Insulin dependent
diabetics, for example, using the right exercise program, can increase
insulin efficiency so much that some patients, who have used insulin
daily for years, no longer need it. In healthy people, the right
exercise completely protects glucose tolerance against the degenerative
changes in insulin metabolism that lead to adult-onset diabetes. Healthy
old men who maintain a lifelong exercise program, have the same healthy
insulin efficiency as young men. A high sugar diet, which progressively
destroys insulin metabolism, makes it virtually mandatory to exercise
if you want to avoid glucose intolerance as you grow older.
Most physicians believe that hardening of the arteries, a
degenerative process, is inevitable. Dr. Lakatta at the National
Institute on Aging Research Center in Baltimore, is showing in ongoing
experiments, that regular exercise maintains arterial elasticity and
even reverses arterial hardening that has already occurred. I could fill
many pages citing numerous bodily functions which are maintained by
regular exercise. But I will keep it short.
Research recently undertaken has revealed the major way in which
exercise protect you against all diseases. It started with the evidence
that exercise increases the overall number of white blood cells.
Followed by more precise findings that moderate exercise increases
bodily production of lymphocytes, interleukin 2, neutrophils and other
disease fighting components of the immune system. There is no doubt that
the right exercise strengthens your immunity. And it also strengthens
your resistance to all forms of damage, decay, bacteria, viruses, toxins
and even radiation. Closing with the wise words of Louis Pasteur, the
father of modern medicine: "Host resistance is the key."
Here is the link for an exercise program that teach you aerobics,
weight lifting, flexibility and nutrition for athletes:
www.exerciseprogram.net
