I wanted to touch base with you to see how everyone is coming along, and wanted to share a little something with you to think about!
Exercising - How to Get Started
Here are some tips to help you get started:
Frequency and duration of activity are more important than intensity. Moderately intense exercise, such as brisk walking, is enough for health benefits if done most days of the week. Normal daily activities as well as formal exercise add up. You get health benefits from walking up stairs and carrying out the trash, gardening, cleaning, shopping, vacuuming, making the bed, and mowing the lawn.
If you can, engage in moderate to vigorous exercise using the large muscles for 30-60 minutes three or more times a week; you're likely to gain even more health benefits in addition to greater fitness.
Remember that for your fitness to improve, you need to exercise regularly. Try for a minimum of 30 minutes of low to moderately intense physical activity on most days of the week. Over time, you may be able to build up to 30-60 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise.
Schedule time for recovery. Many people start with frenzied zeal, exercising too long or too intensely, and give up when muscles and joints become sore or injured. Start slowly and build up gradually, allowing time between sessions for your body to rest and recover.
For most older people, brisk walking becomes a mainstay exercise. Walking for 20-30 minutes or more at least three but preferably five times a week offers health benefits. If one of your goals is losing weight, you may want to walk about 40 minutes several times a week. That's because you burn more fat during longer-duration, lower-intensity exercise than you do during shorter exercise periods.
Fitness Long Ago
The longest-lived peoples in human history usually walked everywhere they went, trailed their animals and herds, hunted wild game on foot, built rugged shelters, or cultivated fields at an active pace each day with intermittent periods of rest. They knew nothing about aerobic exercise, treadmills, or running tracks, but they were masters at anaerobic exercise-activities that incur an "oxygen debt" through temporary or briefly sustained exertion.
For thousands of years, physical activity was an integral part of daily life in work as well as in religious, social and cultural expression. Survival was dependent on the procurement of food, which necessitated physical activity. By 1953, almost sixty percent of American children failed to meet even a minimum fitness standard for health (compared to less than ten percent in Europe). Today, we are even more sedentary.
Inactivity and Overexertion
The modern lifestyle brought about the unhealthy "luxury" of being sedentary. Our buildings, shopping centers, work areas, etc. have all been designed so that we do not have to move around much, but this is not the lifestyle we were designed to follow. What used to constitute continuous physical labor and moderate activity becomes sedentary travel to work and sedentary work-which translates into weight gain and possibly lowered health levels. This sedentary modern lifestyle leads to as much as 1,000 calories per day which are not burned and a 50% reduction in physical activity. Among the disorders associated with an increase of incidence in inactivity are:
Cardiovascular diseases: Heart disease, congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, angina, and myocardial infarction; hypertension, stroke, intermittent claudication , and platelet adhesion and aggregation
Metabolic diseases: Type 2 diabetes, obesity, dyslipidemia, gall bladder disorders
Cancers: Breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, melanoma
Pulmonary diseases: Asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Immune dysfunction disorders
Musculoskeletal disorders: Osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, and physical frailty
Neurological disorders: Cognitive dysfunction
When we exercise we are actually helping the body remove toxins through breathing more deeply (releases toxins from the lungs), perspiration, and muscle activity. If we do not take advantage of the toxic elimination properties of exercise these toxins will remain in our body, disrupt immune function and make us more susceptible to infection and illness.
While lack of exercise suppresses immune function it is important to note the same is true for intensive training. In fact, overtraining temporarily weaken immune function-sometimes for hours afterwards. Next week I'll be sending a email to members asking each of you "What are your personal fitness and health goals?" In order to accomplish any goal we must have a target to aim for.
