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E x e r c i s e:
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- Exercise gives you more energy. When you exercise, you increase the number of red blood cells, which in turn increases the amount of oxygen sent to your muscles. As a rule, people who exercise tend to sleep better and have more energy than those who don't.
- Exercise delays the deterioration of muscles. As you age, the strength and size of your muscles decrease by about 1% a year. But when it begins to decrease depends on your activity level. If you don't exercise, this decrease begins in your thirties. If you consistently do some form of aerobic exercise, it doesn't start until your sixties. To maintain muscle strength and size most effectively, combine aerobic exercise with weight lifting.
- Exercise helps prevent the decline of the central nervous system. This system naturally declines with age, as evidenced by slower reaction times and muscles that don't move as quickly. But studies show that active older people often have faster muscular movement than sedentary younger people.
- Exercise is good for your skin. It increases the blood flow to the skin, which provides it with nutrients and gets rid of wastes. Studies show that exercisers have thicker skin than sedentary people. Thick skin ages more gracefully -- it wrinkles less and later than thin skin.
- Exercise can help prevent osteoporosis. A Tufts University study compared women who walked briskly four times a week to inactive women. The walkers increased spinal bone size by .5%, while the sitters lost 7%.
- Exercise can help prevent high blood pressure. Often, you can reduce high blood pressure by losing a few pounds through regular exercise.
- Active people have lower heart rates and experience less cardiac decline than sedentary people. The heart's pumping capacity decreases with age, but exercise plays a role here as well. For inactive people, oxygen processing efficiency declines by 1 to 2% a year, beginning at age 40. However, those who exercise experience only one-third the decline of sedentary people.
- Exercise can be as effective as psychotherapy in treating moderate depression. Studies show that aerobic exercise has an anti-depressive effect on patients with mild to moderate depression. It also decreases anger, fatigue, and confusion.
- Exercise temporarily reduces anxiety, muscle tension, and blood pressure. Research shows that people have these results for two to five hours after a moderate- to high-intensity workout.
- Exercise benefits everyone -- young, old, and in between. Exercise has been shown to increase test scores of grade-school students and a sense of well-being of the elderly.
E x e r c i s e:
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- Exercise raises the body's metabolic rate, which helps keep fat off. While body weight changes little as we age, body fat increases. Much of this fat shifts from extremities to the abdominal area, where it can contribute to hypertension and heart trouble. Moderate exercise such as walking may be all that's necessary.
- Exercise can help people lose fat around their midsection faster and with less dieting. A University of Washington study found dieters had to lose four times as much weight as exercisers to lose the same amount of "central fat" tied to heart disease.
- The amount of fat you burn has little to do with how much you sweat. Sweat is not a good measure of how much energy you're using because it's more dependent on factors like room temperature, humidity, lack of conditioning, and body weight. Sweat reflects lost water, not lost fat.
- It's nearly impossible to reduce your body fat level to 2% or less. You have two types of fat in your body -- essential fat and storage fat. Essential fat is necessary to the brain, nerve tissue, heart, bone marrow, and cell membranes. Adult males have approximately 3% essential fat, while adult females have from about 12-15% essential fat, due to the reproductive process. Storage fat is simply excess energy that the body has stored as fat. The total amount of storage fat varies from person to person. Experts recommend a total body fat percentage of 8-15% for men and 13-20% for women.
E x e r c i s e:
M o d e r a t i o n i s t h e K
e y
- More exercise is not always better. Your body will respond positively to an appropriate amount of stress. Exceeding that amount can be a waste of time. Some evidence indicates that people who run seven days a week are no more aerobically fit than those who train three or four days a week.
- "No pain, no gain" makes no sense. A sensible exercise program may be uncomfortable at times, but it should never be painful. It should place a reasonable demand on your muscular and cardiovascular systems without subjecting you to a risk of injury.
- Women are not inferior in the exercise arena. While there are more than 150 identifiable physiological differences between men and women, these differences are not related to how well a person can perform if properly trained. While men tend to be stronger, faster, and more powerful, women usually have a higher level of flexibility, coordination, manual dexterity, and balance. Both sexes can become considerably more proficient in all areas with training and exercise.
- Exercise is not a contest. The old adage, "Do your best and leave the rest" should apply to your exercise program. Since fitness is an individual matter, comparisons with other people are meaningless.
- If you want to stick with your workout, find one you enjoy. Exercise can and should be enjoyable; the secret is to find an exercise you like. Research confirms that if you don't like a particular exercise, you probably won't stick with it.
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Pager (510) 607-1251 E-mail: exercise_express@hotmail.com |
