Energize
Resistance training Fights Father Time
Resistance training may be the most important kind of exercise for older adults. People lose 20 percent of their muscle mass between the age of 40 and 60. By age 70, most can’t lift 10 pounds overhead. People lose muscle mass and function as they age, which is partially due to problems in cell energy centers called mitochondria.
Canadian and American scientists, led by Simon Melov, found that six months of resistance training improved the function of these cell energy centers. At the beginning of the study, older adults were 59 percent weaker than young adults. Resistance training reduced the deficit to 38 percent. Gene activity associated with age-related mitochondrial function increased dramatically.
Cell function in the older adults reverted almost to young adult levels. The study showed that resistance training almost literally turned back the clock on cellular aging. Resistance training is an important type of exercise for older people because it prevents losses in muscle mass, bone, and improves strength, power, balance and cellular health. (PLoS ONE, 2(5): e465, 2007)
You know exercise is good for you — but do you know how good? From boosting your mood to improving your sex life, find out how exercise can improve your life.
By Mayo Clinic staff
Want to feel better, have more energy and perhaps even live longer? Look no further than old-fashioned exercise.
The merits of regular physical activity — from preventing chronic health conditions to promoting weight loss and better sleep — are hard to ignore. And the benefits are yours for the taking, regardless of age, sex or physical ability. Need more convincing? Check out seven specific ways exercise can improve your life.
1. Exercise improves your mood.
Need to blow off some steam after a stressful day? A workout at the gym or a brisk 30-minute walk can help you calm down.
Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave you feeling happier and more relaxed than you were before you worked out. You'll also look better and feel better when you exercise regularly, which can boost your confidence and improve your self-esteem. Regular physical activity can even help prevent depression.
2. Exercise combats chronic diseases.
Worried about heart disease? Hoping to prevent osteoporosis? Physical activity might be the ticket.
Regular physical activity can help you prevent — or manage — high blood pressure. Your cholesterol will benefit, too. Regular physical activity boosts high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or "good," cholesterol while decreasing triglycerides. This one-two punch keeps your blood flowing smoothly by lowering the buildup of plaques in your arteries.
And there's more. Regular physical activity can help you prevent type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and certain types of cancer.
3. Exercise helps you manage your weight.
Want to drop those excess pounds? Trade some couch time for walking or other physical activities.
This one's a no-brainer. When you engage in physical activity, you burn calories. The more intense the activity, the more calories you burn — and the easier it is to keep your weight under control. You don't even need to set aside major chunks of time for working out. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk during your lunch break. Do jumping jacks during commercials. Better yet, turn off the TV and take a brisk walk. Dedicated workouts are great, but physical activity you accumulate throughout the day helps you burn calories, too.
4. Exercise boosts your energy level.
Winded by grocery shopping or household chores? Don't throw in the towel. Regular physical activity can leave you breathing easier.
Physical activity delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues. In fact, regular physical activity helps your entire cardiovascular system, the circulation of blood through your heart and blood vessels — work more efficiently. Big deal? You bet! When your heart and lungs work more efficiently, you'll have more energy to do the things you enjoy.
5. Exercise promotes better sleep.
Struggling to fall asleep? Or stay asleep? It might help to boost your physical activity during the day.
A good night's sleep can improve your concentration, productivity and mood. And you guessed it, physical activity is sometimes the key to better sleep. Regular physical activity can help you fall asleep faster and deepen your sleep. There's a caveat, however. If you exercise too close to bedtime, you may be too energized to fall asleep. If you're having trouble sleeping, you might want to exercise earlier in the day.
6. Exercise can put the spark back into your sex life.
Are you too tired to have sex? Or feeling too out of shape to enjoy physical intimacy? Physical activity to the rescue.
Regular physical activity can leave you feeling energized and looking better, which may have a positive effect on your sex life. But there's more to it than that. Regular physical activity can lead to enhanced arousal for women, and men who exercise regularly are less likely to have problems with erectile dysfunction than are men who don't exercise, especially as they get older.
7. Exercise can be — gasp — fun!
Wondering what to do on a Saturday afternoon? Looking for an activity that suits the entire family? Get physical!
Physical activity doesn't have to be drudgery. Take a ballroom dancing class. Check out a local climbing wall or hiking trail. Push your kids on the swings or climb with them on the jungle gym. Plan a neighborhood kickball or touch football game. Find a physical activity you enjoy, and go for it. If you get bored, try something new. If you're moving, it counts!
Are you convinced? Good. Start reaping the benefits of regular physical activity today!
How Fitness Can Put More Money in Your Pocket
Are you having trouble motivating yourself to exercise? Learn how exercise can make you more money or keep you from spending wastefully. It's a great motivator.
In the working world, there are three distinct ways that the "average Joe" can increase his or her wealth. You can either make more money per hour, work more hours, or simply spend less money. Unless you are up for a promotion, earning great overtime pay, or developing methods to get around those pesky utility bills, you will need all the help you can get. Exercising regularly does more than just "make you fit" or help you "lose weight." The benefits of regular exercise support a healthier, more confident, and energetic you. So how does exercise help you financially? Consider the following:
Make More Money per Hour
Lawyers, doctors, and CEOs all earn hundreds, even thousands for an hour of their time. Unless you fall into one of these job descriptions, you need to maximize every moment of that 40 hour week. Here are few ways that exercise can make you more money per hour.
- Exercising regularly produces hormones called endorphins, a natural "happy drug" in the body that puts you in a better mood. People who project a positive image onto others tend to be strong leaders. You can position yourself for advancement to management, a team leader, or an executive through the hormonal help of regular exercise.
- Looking leaner and stronger projects an image of confidence. A boss is more likely to run over someone "without a back bone," but when you are physically fit it creates an atmosphere of control. You can utilize this benefit to negotiate higher salaries, vacation time, or even benefits.
- Exercising regularly pumps more blood to the brain improving your ability to make intelligent decisions. These decisions can catch an employer's eyes and ears, bringing you closer to their focused attention. Simply put, employers are going to promote someone who is smart, makes intelligent decisions, and is reliable. Fact.
Work More Hours
Many occupations have the opportunity for overtime after the standard 40 hour week. Earning 50% more for each hour worked will help pay off debts, build a savings, or put towards a Cancun vacation. The following are three reasons how exercise can give you the "push" to make that overtime pay.
- Exercising regularly allows you to have more energy by utilizing blood sugar more effectively. Avoiding mid day crashes at work that send you home cranky and drowsy at 5:00 pm does not help your work productivity. If you need to put in a few extra hours of work to pay the bills having the balanced blood chemistry to support this extra effort is critical for success.
- Physically fit people have stronger bodies that can handle greater workloads. If your job is walking around a factory floor all day or doing construction work, having a strong core and a good set of lungs will certainly allow you to make it the distance where others will wear out. Strong muscles lead to less injuries on the work site helping your stay on the job and out of the hospital.
- Exercising regularly allows you to sleep more soundly. Anyone that has pulled a 12-hour plus shift knows that fatigue sets in. Accidents can occur if you are sleep deprived or long hours at the office become very unproductive. A regular pattern of exercise improves your body's ability to shut down at night ensuring that each day is productive as possible.
Spend Less Money
Want to know a great way to save money? Easy, don't spend it. Exercising regularly can motivate you to make lifestyle changes that currently are costing your hundreds or thousands of dollars a year. Consider how these three exercise tips can change your daily habits, promoting a healthier you while spending less.
- Buying lots of expensive gym equipment, getting a personal trainer, and purchasing designer workout gear can bust a hole in any budget. Skip the catalgoues and department stores and start with you. Yoga, body weight exercises (such as pushups or sit ups), jogging, and walking cost nothing. While doing these "free" activities you are less inclined to order random items online, eat a giant pizza, or go shopping.
- Exercising regularly makes you feel good, starting a chain reaction of other positive steps. Perhaps you stop wasting money on junk food, eating big expensive meals at restaurants, and maybe even purchasing the giant big screen TV that would be centered on the self-sculpted dent in the couch. One good thing will lead to another.
- Healthcare only really costs you significantly when you have to use it. Premiums on coverage are unavoidable but the costs of medications to control ailments such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or joint pain are manageable. Exercising regularly improves control of blood sugar, increases heart strength, and decreases daily pain from arthritis, all conditions that your medications are expensively controlling.
Exercise to Make Money
Want to make more money? Want more responsibility to get that promotion? Want to have the energy to make it through the day? Stop looking for answers and start looking in the mirror. People were designed to move! Stop fighting nature and gain all the personal and financial benefits that your body has to offer
Until recently, most experts didn’t think resistance training was valuable for cutting body fat. In the 70’s and 80’s, health experts pushed aerobics and didn’t think resistance exercise promoted health. Studies during the past 10 years found that resistance training builds muscle, improves cellular health and promotes fat loss.
Researchers from East Carolina University found that resistance training increased fat use in abdominal fat during and for at least 40 minutes after exercise in young men. In obese men, three months of resistance training increased fat breakdown by stimulating adrenaline receptors in fat stores. They concluded that resistance training prevents fat gain and improves body composition by increasing caloric consumption, promoting abdominal fat breakdown and boosting whole-body fat use. Resistance training is a proven fat fighter that works even better when combined with aerobic exercise. (Journal Applied Physiology, 102: 1767-1772, 2007)
Not only is exercise smart for your heart and weight, but it can make you smarter and better at what you do.
Anyone with a brain exercises these days, but did you know exercise can return the favor and train your brain? Not only is exercise smart for your heart and resistance, but it can make you smarter and better at what you do.
"I like to say that exercise is like taking a little Prozac or a little Ritalin at just the right moment," says John J. Ratey, MD, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of A User's Guide to the Brain. "Exercise is really for the brain, not the body. It affects mood, vitality, alertness, and feelings of well-being."
Stephen C. Putnam, MEd, took up canoeing in a serious way to combat the symptoms of adult ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Then he wrote a book, titled Nature's Ritalin for the Marathon Mind, about the benefits of exercise on troublesome brain disorders such as ADHD, a neurological/behavioral condition resulting in hyperactivity and the inability to focus on tasks.
Putnam cites studies of children who ran around for 15 to 45 minutes before class and cut their ants-in-the-pants behavior by half when they got to class. As with most exercise, the effects were relatively lasting, smoothing out behavior two to four hours after the exercise.
Putnam also points to some preliminary animal research that suggests that exercise can cause new stem cells to grow, refreshing the brain and other body parts. According to Ratey, exercise also stimulates nerve growth factors. "I call it Miracle-Gro for the brain," he says.
How Exercise Trains the Brain
Christin Anderson, MS, wellness and fitness coordinator of the University of San Francisco, explains that exercise affects many sites within the nervous system and sets off pleasure chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine that make us feel calm, happy, and euphoric.
In other words, if you don't want to wait for those good feelings to come by accident (if they do), you can bring them on by exercising.
"When one exercises," Anderson says, "you can think more clearly, perform better, and your morale is better. This is pure science -- stimulate your nervous system and function at a higher level."
Effects of Exercise on Depression
Almost everyone has heard of the "fog of war," but the "fog of living" is depression. "Depression affects memory and effectiveness (not to mention the ability to get up, get dressed, and function)," Anderson says. "If you can control your physiology, you can relax, focus, and remember."
In a study reported in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness in 2001, 80 young male and female volunteers were tested for mood and then did aerobics for an hour. Of the 80, 52 were depressed before the exercise. That group was the most likely to benefit, reporting a reduction in anger, fatigue, and tension. They also felt more vigorous after the workout. ( Jean Lawrence WebMD Feature)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Two new studies provide more evidence that regular aerobic exercise not only staves off the problems with thinking and memory that often come with age, but it can actually help turn back the clock on brain aging.
In one study, researchers found evidence that engaging in moderate physical activity such as brisk walking, swimming, or yoga in midlife or later may cut the risk of developing mild thinking problems.
In the other study, a group of elderly individuals who already had mild problems had improvements in their mental agility after six months of high-intensity aerobic activity.
People with mild mental impairments of the kind studied - known as mild cognitive impairment, typically have some memory difficulties, such as forgetting people's names or misplacing items. Each year, 10 to 15 percent of individuals with mild cognitive impairment will develop dementia, as compared with 1 percent to 2 percent of the general population. Previous studies in animals and humans have suggested that exercise may improve thinking and memory.
To investigate further, Seattle-based researchers studied 33 adults with mild cognitive impairment. Twenty-three spent 45 to 60 minutes on a treadmill or stationary bicycle four days a week for six months, while the other 10 "control" subjects did stretching exercises but kept their heart rate low. Six months of intense aerobic exercise "improved cognitive abilities of attention and concentration, organization, planning, and multi-tasking," study chief Dr. Laura Baker noted in an email to Reuters Health. In contrast, cognitive function test scores continued to decline in the group that didn't have vigorous exercise.
Might it be possible to get the same brain benefit from lower intensity aerobic exercise?
"In theory, yes," Baker said, "but we are just now starting the studies that will help us know how little is enough. In the next five years, we'll have a much better idea about the minimum 'dose' of exercise needed (how often, duration of exercise sessions, how much exertion is needed) without compromising the cognitive benefits."
Baker, who is from the University of Washington School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center, also noted that the average magnitude of mental improvement with aerobic exercise was "bigger for women than for men."
And while she's not exactly sure why, she noted that, for the women in the study, aerobic exercise improved the body's sensitivity to insulin, a hormone that plays an important role in providing energy to the muscles and organs of the body and to the brain. "Contrary to our expectations, aerobic exercise did not improve insulin sensitivity for the men," Baker said.
EXERCISE TO WARD OFF MENTAL DECLINE
The other study, by Dr. Yonas E. Geda and colleagues at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, involved 1,324 elderly adults free of dementia in 2006-2008. Experts determined that 198 had mild cognitive impairment and 1,126 had normal cognitive function.
Those who said they had engaged in moderate exercise such as brisk walking, aerobics, yoga, strength training or swimming in their 40s, 50s and beyond were less apt to have mild cognitive impairment, the researchers found.
Moderate exercise in midlife was associated with a 39 percent reduced likelihood of developing mild cognitive impairment, and moderate exercise in late life was associated with a 32 percent reduction in the odds of mental decline. The findings were consistent among men and women.
These two studies, both published in the Archives of Neurology, contribute to a growing body of literature supporting the benefits of a physically active lifestyle on the brain.
SOURCE: Archives of Neurology, January 2010.
Running at a leisurely pace will not get you the same results as really pushing yourself hard. One way is to do HIIT, (High Intensity Interval Training). These workouts are done in various speeds throughout the workout, changing your pace every few moments. This helps you do very quick stretches while working out your body at a variety of intensities.
How Does HIIT Training Work?
The premise behind the HIIT program is simple: rather than spend more and more time exercising at a slow pace, hoping to burn more fat, you alternate intervals of near-maximum effort (such as sprinting) with periods of moderate intensity aerobic exercise (such as walking or slow jogging).
Research has clearly shown that HIIT training actually burns fat more effectively and efficiently than low-intensity exercise. The reason is, HIIT speeds up your metabolism and keeps it revved up for some time after your workout resulting in a greater number of total calories being utilized than low-intensity training; and, everyone knows that more calories burned equals more fat lost.
You Must Prepare Your Body Before You Begin A HIIT Training Schedule
If you haven’t tried sprinting since you were a kid, you’re in for a shock. Make no mistake about it, HIIT training is much more demanding on the body than the low-intensity exercise. So before you try this training approach, you need to spend a few weeks getting your body tuned up.
The first four weeks of your Novum program has been designed to help you develop the basic level of aerobic fitness necessary to prepare you for the rigors of HIIT training. Both the resistance training and progressive aerobic components of your program will gradually bring your body up to a level which should allow you to safely embark on the HIIT schedule, which has been outlined for you in your Novum program.
How Often And When Should I Perform HIIT Exercises?
If you follow the program properly, two to three HIIT sessions a week should produce significant fat burning effects. However, there are many individuals that find one or two sessions a week to be plenty. To prevent overtraining, do not perform more than three HIIT sessions per week and try to incorporate the program on your “off days” or on days that you are only training your upper body.
You can also alternate your HIIT training program with you normal low intensity aerobics program. For example, if your aerobic schedule requires you to perform some type of cardio exercise 4 times per week, you could do two HIIT training sessions and two low-intensity sessions. Also, it has been shown that HIIT training is most effective if performed first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, but, if you can’t do it in the morning, don’t worry, you will still get great results any other time of the day. Additionally, you will maximize the fat burning effects of HIIT if you don’t eat for about one hour after your workout.
How Hard Should I Push Myself?
As with any new training program, you should be cautious and gradually allow your body to adapt to the new stresses you are placing on it. This is especially true of HIIT training. Your HIIT program will give you a recommended starting point and will incrementally increase the duration of the exercises as your fitness level increases. However, each individual is different, so we recommend that you start at a pace that is in line with your level of cardiovascular fitness.
For example, let’s assume you’re going to apply HIIT training to running sprints. You should begin by jogging for 30-60 seconds at about 50% maximum-level effort, followed by 30 seconds of sprinting at about 80-90% maximum-level effort. You will repeat this cycle 8-15 minutes (depending on what week you are at in your transformation program). It seems pretty easy, but don’t be fooled – this type of training will push you to your limits and really get your heart going.
How Hard Should I Push Myself?
One of the great things about HIIT training is that it can be applied to all sorts of activities – in or out of the gym. The most popular outside activities are sprinting or running stairs, but you can also apply the HIIT training techniques to a stationary bike, a stairstepper, or any activity where you can alternate between periods of high and low intensity.
If you choose to use a stationary bike and or a stairstepper, you will need to make some slight modifications. As the “sprint phases” tend to be a little less strenuous on the bicycle and stairstepper, due to the limitations of the equipment, you’ll want to jack up the intensity. In other words, don’t use level one or two on either machine; instead, try to start out with at least level five as your low 50% maximum level and then work up from there.