Functional and Mental Performance, Prevention, Health and Great Look through Fitness an Wellness
February 13th, 2008 Milan
People, who are active are less likely to develop depression.
In study of nearly 2,000 residents of Alameda County, California, people who were more active were nearly 20 percent less likely to be diagnosed with depression over the next 5 years than less active residents.
Being physically active helps if you are already depressed!
More intensively you exercise, better you feel, less depressed you are.
I know people, who work out intensively every day to overcome fear, anxiety and the result usually is: they feel very confident, they have very strong minds, they are mostly in very good mood, and they are very decisive.
I also see it on myself. After I had a flu recently, I could not work out for couple of weeks, and I felt not only week physically, but also mentally. I could really feel the difference in my mind.
What is interesting, I felt kind of week mentally, only after two weeks of not exercising. I can’t even imagine the negative feelings of a really inactive person.
For the best effect, try to exercise every day at least 30 minutes, combine resistance workout with cardiovascular workout, and if you are a regular exerciser, don’t be afraid to speed up a little or do a few more of those hard repetitions at the end of the set, and you will really feel great.
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December 19th, 2007 Milan
It happens earlier in women than in men, but in both genders muscle starts to wither away if it’s not used.
University of Maryland’s Ben Hurley and Coopers Institute’s Steven Blair point about muscle mass loss and inactivity:
- Muscle atrophy for people with average activity levels starts at age 40 for women and in the late 50s for men
- For every decade after about age 50, you lose some 6 percent of your muscle mass, which comes with a 10 to 15 percent loss of your strength
- Anyone can build muscle back up with strength training exercises. After two months of training, we see a 40 percent increase in strength
- The earlier you start, the better. But even people over 100 years old can partially reverse some of the loss that occurs with aging
- The trick is to not just use the muscle, but to overload it. You have to make it work harder than it’s accustomed to
- If you overload it in a gradual, progressive way, you can make the muscles bigger and stronger by making each muscle fiber thicker
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November 21st, 2007 Milan
Every year, 1.2 million Americans have a heart attack.
Exercise affects the function of hearth muscle, but it also affects the blood vessels, from the large aortic artery to the large capillaries.
Exercise:
- can boost your HDL (”good”) cholesterol
- makes the lining of blood vessels more flexible
- has beneficial effects on risk factors for heart disease like lipids, blood pressure and insulin sensitivity
If partially blocked arteries are more elastic, they can relax better and send more blood to the heart muscles.
You don’t have to be an athlete to protect your heart.
In a study that tracked nearly 40 000 women for five years, those who walked briskly for at least an hour a week were half as likely to be diagnosed with hearth disease as those who did no regular walking. The risk was even lower for women who jogged or did other vigorous activity.
What’s more, researchers have tested the impact of exercise training on people who already have heart disease.
“If they are assigned to an exercise program, they have a lower risk of dying and dying from heart disease,” says I-Min Lee, associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
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November 5th, 2007 Milan
It’s bad enough that inactivity can turn your muscles to Jell-O. Can it do the same to your brain?
“The evidence is fairly solid that people who are more physically active are at lower risk for cognitive decline and dementia,” says Constantine Lyketsos, director of the division of geriatric psychiatry and neuropsychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
For example, the brains of physically active mice have more nerves, more connections between nerves, fewer clogged arteries, more oxygen flow, and better ability to utilize glucose. All are probably factors in helping prevent cognitive decline and dementia.
Recent studies used mice that are prone to acquire the amyloid plaques that are found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.
At least one study suggest that if you take these mice out of their traditional cages, where there is little to do, and put them into stimulating cages with more colors, objects, brighter areas, and little mouse treadmills, you find fewer amyloid deposits in the brain.
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November 1st, 2007 Milan
“The evidence is fairly clear now that men and women who are physically active have a 30 to 40 percent lower risk of colon cancer compared to individuals who are not active,” says Harvard’s I-Min Lee, who examined dozens of studies.
Experts have several theories that might explain how physical activity protects the colon. ” It increases transit in the intestine, which makes food flow through fast,” says Lee. “So any carcinogens in the intestine have less contact with the cells that line the intestine.”
Another possibility is that regular exercise shores up the immune system. ” That would protect the body from any cancer, including colon,” she ads.
Than there’s the obvious: “Physical activity prevents weight gain, and the overweight have a higher risk of colon cancer,” says Lee.
How much movement is enough? “We don’t have precise data, but it looks like you need 30 to 60 minutes a day of moderate-intensity physical activity.” says Lee.
Regular exercise also appears to lower the risk of breast cancer by about 20 percent.
“We are not clear how much physical activity you need to reduce the risk of breast cancer,” says Lee. But it’s in the same ballpark as for colon cancer - between 30 and 60 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a day.”
As for some other cancers, she ads,”there’s some suggestive evidence, but it’s not as conclusive.”
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October 26th, 2007 Milan
“The one thing that seems to deteriorate quickest with inactivity is insulin sensitivity,” says Ben Hurley, a professor of kinesiology at the university of Maryland at College park.
Type 2 diabetes by far the most common kind occurs when the body becomes insensitive, or resistant, to insulin in the blood. When insulin stops working, blood sugar level rise and diabetes sets in.
Regular exercise reverses the damage.
“It increases insulin sensitivity and makes the cells better at taking in glucose and processing it,” explains I-Min Lee, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
“The data are striking ,” says Hurley. And it’s not just and issue for adults. “Type 2 diabetes used to be a disease of middle age,” he adds. “But now we’re seeing it in young people. It’s a sedentary disease.”
Hurley sounds like researcher Steven Blair talking about the metabolic syndrome, which raises the risk of both diabetes and heart disease.
Doctors diagnose the syndrome when people have a large waist, low HDL (”good”) cholesterol, and elevated (though not necessarily high) blood pressure, blood sugar, and triglyceride.
“The metabolic syndrome is misnamed,” says Blair, who is president of the Cooper Institute in Dallas, Texas. “It ought to be called the inactivity syndrome.”
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