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Exercise to Improve Your Body and
Your Brain by
Dr. Joseph Mercola
Exercise is a
critical component of good health, especially as you
age. Exercise will help you:
- Sleep better
- Lose weight, gain
weight, or maintain weight, depending on your needs
- Improve your
resistance to fight infections
- Lower your risk of
cancer, heart disease and diabetes
- Help your brain
work better, making you smarter.
The key to obtaining
the benefits of exercise is to find a program and stick
to it. Of course, it is useful to have a guide, and
toward that end I offer the recommendations below and an
exercise table you can print out and use to help you
track your progress.
Key points to remember
when exercising:
Listen to your body.
If exercise worsens symptoms, modify your program or, if
need be, stop. As your energy and health improve, you
will be able to tolerate larger amounts of the aerobic
exercise, which will lead to weight loss.
It helps to hire a
personal trainer who can guide you through the specifics
of a good exercise program. If you do use a personal
trainer please be aware that many don't understand the
nutritional principles discussed on this site, and it is
useful to ask them to read the
nutrition plan to understand the healthy direction
you are taking.
Be consistent.
You need at least 30 minutes of exercise a day to
experience any weight loss benefits. Major studies have
shown that 60 minutes a day is actually best. Ideally,
the exercise should be continuous, but it could be split
up into two 30-minute sections.
Start with walking if you are overweight.
Most heavy people start with walking and that is an
excellent choice, as it is low-risk and inexpensive. The
major problem with walking, however, is that many people
become fit relatively rapidly but don't increase the
intensity of the workouts as they become more fit. Once
you become comfortable with a routine, it is important
to increase the intensity in order to continue
benefiting.
For more information on
walking for fitness, see my article "Walk
Your Way to Better Health."
Increase your intensity regularly.
Ideally you should exercise at an intensity that makes
it somewhat difficult to talk to the person next to you.
This prevents you from having to measure your pulse or
use a heart-rate monitor. If you can comfortably talk to
the person next to you, you aren't working hard enough
to produce the benefits you need to lose weight.
However, if you are using so much oxygen with your
exercise that there is not enough left over to allow you
to carry on a conversation at all, then you are
exercising too hard and need to cut back a bit.
Try race-walking.
When outdoors, it is sometimes difficult to walk fast
enough to get to the necessary level of exertion. Try
race walking -- Racewalk.com has an excellent section on
teaching you how to do this. However, if you use a
treadmill indoors you can easily increase the incline to
improve the intensity of the walking.
Try running.
If you feel ambitious you can advance to running, which
is my personal favorite -- I have been a runner since
1968. It is one of the most efficient and inexpensive
ways to stay healthy; the only equipment required is a
good pair of shoes. If you do decide to run, please
recognize that most shoes will not last more than six
months. If you use them longer than six months you will
increase your risk of injury.
One of the downsides of
running is that you must depend on the weather to
cooperate. You can always use a treadmill, of course,
but that adds the expense of a health club or the
equipment for your home. If you are elevating your
program to this level and will invest in equipment, I
believe that an elliptical machine is, for reasons
explained below, far superior to the treadmill in
providing an optimal aerobic exercise experience.
Try an elliptical machine.
Elliptical machines are generally less expensive and far
quieter than treadmills and provide a complete lower
body workout by rotating the use of the different muscle
groups on your legs. However, you will have to be sure
to use the elliptical that can incline throughout
various levels. Some models have a fixed based and
handles that allow you to exercise your arms, but I
believe it is more helpful to exercise the different leg
muscles as they are much larger than your arm muscles.
I normally suggest
adjusting the resistance setting and frequency of steps
per minute so one is just short of not having enough
breath to carry on a conversation. This is the aerobic
threshold that will produce cardiovascular benefits.
The ellipticals are
also great for reducing the boredom and monotony of
exercise.
What I normally advise
patients to do is to change the incline setting every
minute or two by one notch. This will activate different
leg muscles. I also suggest reversing the direction of
the leg movement. With ellipticals it is equally easy to
walk backwards or forwards. You can also avoid holding
on to the sidebars, which will exercise your kinesthetic
sense of balance.
Be cautious.
If you are going to use exercise for weight loss,
consider a weight bearing exercise. It has been my
experience that non-weight bearing exercises like
swimming and bicycling, are not as efficient or
effective for weight loss. You will typically need to
exercise four times as long in these activities to
receive the same benefit of running or using the
elliptical. Since most of us are seriously time
pressured, these exercises become less valuable for most
of us.
Swim, but only in fresh water.
Swimming is one of the best exercises on the planet,
working all the major muscles, but it poses the
challenge of exposing you to the large amounts of
chlorine that are in most swimming pools. However, you
still have the option of swimming in the lake, river or
ocean depending on the temperature of the water.
Try bicycling, but be aware of safety
measures.
If you decide to bicycle for health, study all bicycle
safety measures and be aware of the high risk for
serious injury compared with other exercise options.
Always, of course, wear your helmet.
Stick with it!
The fact that we need to exercise is not news to anyone.
For those who don’t exercise, its not a matter of
understanding its benefits, but far more so, finding the
motivation to start -- and stay -- on a program. The big
breakthrough is that we now have techniques like
EFT,
a form of psychological acupressure, that can facilitate
our ability to start and successfully stick with a
long-term exercise program. You can go to my
free EFT manual to learn how to use this incredible
tool.
Finally, it is also
quite useful to map, plan and track your program to
obtain long-term success; you can use
this printable exercise table toward that end, or
create your own chart.
Further reading:
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85-year-old couple, married 60 years, had died in a car
crash. They had been in good health the last ten years
mainly due to her interest in health food, and exercise. 
Diabetes
linked to Alzheimer's disease. Here is another reason to
keep your weight down and your exercise up. Based on a 5.5
year study of 823 older persons, those who develop diabetes
had a 65% increased risk of getting Alzheimer's disease.
This risk remained even after adjusting for age, gender,
education level, and stroke.
HealthNews, July 2004
