Prolonged Sitting? Get a Little Exercise!
Having a job that requires prolonged sitting is likely to be associated with increased heart attack and premature death risks unless you also exercise....
Sarcopenia: Loss of Muscle Size and Strength
Everyone loses muscle size and strength with aging, to increase risk for disability, accidents, diseases, loss of independence and premature death (J Cachexia Sarcopenia Muscle 2018;9:3–19). Loss of muscle is called sarcopenia. You lose about 10 percent for each 10 years from age 50 to age 70, and about 15 percent per decade after age 70. A healthier lifestyle helps to slow loss of muscle size and strength as a person ages
Should You Cool Down after Exercise?
Cooling down means that after vigorous exercise, you move far more slowly for several minutes before you stop exercising for that session. The main reason for "cooling down" is to keep you from feeling dizzy or passing out after very vigorous exercise
Heat Stroke
Heat stroke during exercise is a rapid uncontrolled rise in body temperature that can cause you to pass out and can even kill you. It is a medical emergency that can cause permanent organ damage, kidney failure and seizures. It should never happen to you because your body sends you plenty of warning signals as your temperature rises.
Being Physically Active in the Evening May Prolong Your Life
Moving about in the evening is associated with lower risk for heart disease and death in obese adults, compared to being physically active in the morning or afternoon. Evening activity was associated with lower incidence of eye, kidney or nerve damage in those who were also diabetic in addition to being obese. The study included 29,836 obese adults, average age 62, including 2995 who also suffered from diabetes. The researchers used wrist accelerometers to determine levels of physical activity, and followed the participants for 7.9 years.
Use “Stress and Recover” Workouts, Even If You Exercise Just For Health
Competitive athletes train by "stressing and recovering," and healthy people who do not compete in sports can gain greater benefits from their exercise programs by using this same training principle. You have to damage muscles to gain strength and enlarge muscles. You become more fit if on one day, you stress your muscles by taking a hard workout, and then letting your muscles recover by exercising at a very slow and relaxed pace with reduced force on your muscles, for as many days as it takes for your muscles to feel ready for another hard workout.
Muscle Fibers and Sarcomeres
Each muscle fiber is made of a series of blocks called sarcomeres that are lined up end to end. Each sarcomere is attached to the one next to it at a "Z line." Muscle fibers do not contract equally along their lengths; they contract only at each "Z line". To strengthen a muscle, you have to put enough force on the muscle to damage the Z-lines, as evidenced by bleeding and swelling into the Z-lines.
What to Eat and Drink for Hot Weather Exercise
When you exercise in hot weather, you don't need special sports drinks or power bars. A review of 46 studies shows that a person can prolong endurance by eating before and during exercise (Scand J Med Sci Sports, 2018 May;28(5):1476-1493). However, even the most elite athletes can get the nutrients they need from ordinary foods, water and salt. Healthy and fit people usually don't need to drink or eat when they exercise at a casual pace for less than two hours.
Eating Carbohydrates Before Lifting Weights Can Help You Lift Heavier Weights
It is well known that taking carbohydrates before and during endurance exercise helps to increase both speed and endurance. It is not as well known that taking carbohydrates before and during resistance training for strength can increase intensity and duration of workouts. A review of 21 randomized controlled studies that included 226 young adults found that taking carbohydrates before or during lifting weights increased training volume, and caused higher peak blood lactic acid and sugar levels
Benefits of Resistance Exercise
The American Heart Association recommends that “accumulating evidence suggests resistance training is a safe and effective approach for improving cardiovascular health in adults with and without cardiovascular disease. Resistance training not only can improve or maintain muscle mass and strength, but also has favorable physiological and clinical effects on cardiovascular disease and risk factors.”
How to Become Stronger: Weight Training for Middle-Aged and Older People
A review of 22 studies specifically on how to grow larger and stronger muscles found that the best way for untrained people to grow muscles is to use lighter weights with more repetitions. On the other hand, most trained athletes gained more strength by using heavier weights with fewer repetitions
Exercising in Cold Weather
Heart attacks and strokes are associated with high blood pressure and increased clotting, and systolic blood pressure increases up to 1.7 mm Hg in the winter months compared to the summer months. Cold weather is associated with an increased incidence of heart attacks. If you have heart or lung disease, you are far more likely to die in cold weather than in the heat
How to Start an Exercise Program
If you want to become fit and use exercise to help prevent a heart attack, first check with your doctor to make sure that you do not have anything wrong with your heart or blood vessels. Intense exercise can increase your risk for a heart attack if you already have a damaged heart.
Low Vitamin D Increases Risk for Sports Injuries
If you suffer muscle or tendon injuries, particularly during the winter or early spring, ask your doctor to order a blood test for hydroxy vitamin D. If it is below 30 ng/mL, you probably need more exposure to sunlight or you need to take vitamin D pills. A review of sports injuries showed that lack of vitamin D can be a major cause of recurrent winter-time injuries in athletes and exercisers
How Exercise May Help to Prevent Cancer
A new study from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found a potential mechanism through which intense exercise can help to prevent cancer. Lynch Syndrome is a hereditary condition that affects more than a million North Americans, and puts these men and women at an 80 percent chance of developing colon cancer at a very young age, and the women at a 60 percent chance of developing endometrial cancer.
Running is an Effective Treatment for Depression
A new study supports several previous studies showing that running is as effective as anti-depressant drugs in treating depression and anxiety, and offers far more health benefits than drugs do. The study included 141 participants, average age 38, in which 45 participants received the antidepressant medication Lexapro (escitalopram), and 96 underwent 16 weeks of supervised 45-minute outdoor running sessions recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the American College of Sports Medicine.
All Exercise Can Help to Lower High Blood Pressure
A review of 270 controlled studies with a total of 15,827 participants found that all forms of exercise can help to lower high blood pressure: aerobic exercise, resistance strength training, combined aerobic and resistance training, high-intensity interval training and isometric exercise training. Surprisingly, isometric exercise training was found to be the most effective way to lower both systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
Strength Training May Be More Effective than Aerobic Exercise to Help Prevent Heart Attacks
Several recent studies show that resistance training for strength may be more effective than aerobic exercise, such as jogging or walking, to help prevent high blood pressure and heart attacks. This may surprise you because many champion body builders and weight lifters have died at very young ages from heart attacks, but the causes of these deaths are likely to have been their use of hormones such as anabolic steroids, growth hormones and insulin.
Weak Muscles Predict Dementia
A study of 1275 people found that those who had very weak hand grip strength had signs of accelerated aging, as measured by deterioration of the DNA in their cells. The authors of this study cited earlier studies showing that grip strength appears to be a better predictor of life expectancy than blood pressure.
Being Active Can Help to Prevent Cancer
It is established that a regular exercise program is associated with reduced incidence of heart attacks and some types of cancers. Several recent studies show that you don’t have to have a formal exercise program to gain these benefits. Just being active is also associated with reduced likelihood for certain cancers. You can stay active by climbing stairs, mowing your own lawn, washing your dishes and so forth, Just keep on moving -- don’t sit in a chair or lie in bed all day long.
Lifting Weights Helps to Lower High Blood Pressure
Researchers have known for a long time that regular aerobic exercises like walking, jogging or cycling help to lower high blood pressure and also help to prevent strokes and heart attacks. However, there is data to show that a person can suffer a stroke or heart attack while lifting heavy weights because during heavy lifting, high blood pressure rises even higher. Many doctors recommend resistance exercises to help treat high blood pressure, but people with high blood pressure need to be very careful if they try to lift heavy weights.
Exercise Helps to Prevent Dementia
About 22 percent of North Americans ages 85-89 and 33 percent of those over 90 suffer some degree of dementia (JAMA Neurol, 2022;79(12):1242-1249). The risk for dementia can be reduced significantly by exercising and lowering high blood sugar levels, maintaining a healthful weight, and avoiding smoking. Two recent studies show that exercise may be even more important in reducing Alzheimer’s disease risk.
High Fitness Level Linked to Reduced Risk for Cancers
A study that followed 170,000 Swedish men (average age 62) for 9.6 years found that high levels of physical fitness were associated with a markedly reduced risk for lung cancer or colon cancer, and reduced risk for death from cancers of the colon, lung or prostate. Physical fitness was measured by having the subjects exercise vigorously on a stationary bicycle to determine the maximal amount of oxygen they could use (VO2max).
How Fast Do You Lose Fitness When You Stop Exercising?
A review of 31 published studies found that the COVID-19 epidemic has forced many people to stop exercising, which will increase their risk for several diseases that can shorten their lives. COVID-19 is caught mainly by breathing indoor air where people congregate, so the epidemic stopped many people from going to gyms or practicing sports indoors.
Elastic Resistance Bands Can Make You As Strong As Lifting Weights
Scientists reviewed studies on elastic resistance bands, and concluded that strength training with elastic bands could cause the same gain in strength as lifting heavy weights for both the upper and the lower body. Training in the studies ranged from 2-5 times a week for 4-12 weeks.
Basic Resistance Band Training
Start your introduction to resistance band training by first reading a prior article on this site about resistance training. The same principles apply but now the implement is resistance bands and not free weights or machines. And, resistance bands can be an effective implement with the added benefits of low cost, convenience, and the ability to resistance train virtually anywhere at any time.
Both Lifting Weights and Exercising Intensely Help to Prolong Lives
Scientific studies firmly establish that a regular exercise program can help to prolong your life. Recent studies show that older adults who lift weights are up to 22 percent less likely to die from any cause, heart attacks or cancer than people who do not lift weights. Those who both lift weights and participate in an aerobic exercise program had the lowest death risk of all.
Keep On Moving to Prolong Your Life
People who walked at least 8,000 steps per day just one or two days a week had a 15 percent lower death rate over the next 10 years, when compared to people who walked less than that. People who had 3-7 days with 8,000 steps or more had an additional reduction in death rate. This suggests that moving around helps to prolong your life, even if you don’t have an organized exercise program.
Time-Restricted Eating for Serious Exercisers
Several recent research papers have found that time-restricted eating can help to prevent diabetes and heart attacks and prolong life. However, some people express concern that athletes and regular exercisers may develop low blood sugar and lose muscle if they go on a schedule of not eating for intermittent periods such as 6PM to 6AM. An exciting study now shows that time-restricted eating can improve health in serious athletes and may even help them to improve running performance by helping them to lose excess body fat.
