I recently re-read the book "Healing through Exercise" by Jorg Blech and highly recommend it for everyone. He discusses the importance of exercise for all aspects of the human body. It is a good overview of the subject; so much so that while reading the book, I felt guilty for sitting down and actually walked slowly on the treadmill while reading much of it.
Exercise grows new nerve cells in the human brain. It increases cancer survival for colon, breast, and prostate cancers by up to 50%. It slows the aging process by years as we age biologically, not chronologically. It decreases the risk of dying from stable congestive heart failure by 35%.
Experts at the WHO report that 60% of the world's population are sedentary, 41% get less than two hours of moderate exercise per week, and 17% are completely inactive. Two million deaths per year are due to lack of exercise.
We determine how fast we age as aging is only 30% due to our genes, 70% is environmental. With no exercise, humans lose 1-2% of their strength per year, but with training can gain 30-40%. It is never too late. Studies on people in their 80s and 90s have shown that they can triple their muscle strength and increase muscle size by 10%, which leads to better balance and increased quality of life.
The minimum requirement seems to be 30 minutes of moderate activity most days of the week, although 60 minutes most days is better. Strength training twice a week is good, as well. The good effects start with burning about 1000 kilo calories/week by exercise. It doesn't have to be sports or athletic endeavors either....doing housecleaning, gardening, walking to run errands, all work.
Enforced bedrest for any reason is very bad, especially for people over the age of 70. For them it can lead to loss of the ability to ambulate. A survey of residents at one nursing home showed 66% got less than 2 hours of physical motion/week; 1/3 of the residents had no physical activity at all. Bedrest is not even recommended for back pain any longer. Exercise will not cause further damage to a disc, and is as effective as medication in providing pain relief without the loss of abdominal and spinal muscle strength which bedrest causes.
Using exercise to treat disease is a novel approach, but is happening more often. Some oncologists (unfortunately not Dean's) are putting exercise bikes in their patient's hospital rooms and recommending exercise for 20 min. twice a day. Exercise can treat and reverse heart disease, diabetes mellitus, and hypertension. It works as well as medication for osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, ADHD, and Alzheimer's Disease, without the side effects. Most doctors would like more research to be done, but who will pay for it? There is no money to be made on exercise like there is on the pharmaceutical industry.
Blech also dispels the myth that running leads to degradation of knee cartilage. It is actually previous injury, obesity, and a sedentary lifestyle that cause it. The human body evolved to run long distances. Harvard anthropologist Daniel Lieberman states that endurance-wise, humans are the best athletes in the animal kingdom. People can take up running at any age to improve their health.
This is all motivation for me to get out there and jog tomorrow and well into my nineties.
********************************
"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going." Beverly Sills
Last week was a busy one for me, so I apologize for lack of blogs and content. I was taking a service dog training volunteer refresher class all week. It is always good to be reminded of the appropriate techniques to train these rescued shelter dogs.
Yesterday we celebrated Dean's Birthday with our daughter. He had just had chemotherapy the day prior so we couldn't go to a public place with exposure to possible sick people. It was a bit cool to walk in a park or go on a picnic, so our daughter took us on a drive through the foothills southwest of Denver, to Deckers, to the Hayman and Buffalo Creek wildfire areas. Beautiful rustic areas despite the burn zones. We did have vegan German Chocolate Cake and Cherry Amaretto Coconut Bliss "ice cream" afterwards....I guess one can slip up on the diet a bit to celebrate a 60th birthday.
Looking together in the same direction.
Sea otters hold hands while they sleep so they don't drift apart.
No comments:
Post a Comment