The Whole Heart Solution by Joel K. Kahn MD

Author:Joel K. Kahn, MD
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Readers Digest

WHY EXERCISE IS SO IMPORTANT

Getting fit will require more than simply breaking up with your favorite chair.

Standing isn’t enough. You want to move with purpose. Yes, I’m talking about the e-word: exercise.

Physical activity is anything that makes you move your body and burn calories, such as climbing stairs, dancing, or playing sports. Aerobic exercise, such as walking, jogging, swimming, or biking, benefits your heart. Strength and stretching exercises are best for overall stamina and flexibility.

Exercise pushes your body out of its comfort zone, encouraging all of your muscles—including your heart—to grow stronger with every step. The importance of remaining as fit as a fiddle has been established in so many studies that it’s difficult for me to pick just a few of my favorites. I hope these help to drive the point home. When researchers from Harvard, Stanford, and the London School of Economics pooled and analyzed the data from 16 different studies on hundreds of thousands of participants, they found that exercise was just as effective as most prescription drugs—and, in the case of stroke, more effective—at reducing deaths from heart disease.75

In a different study, researchers asked 4,183 male veterans to run on a treadmill while they were wearing sensors on their chests. The data from the sensors helped them to determine a measure called metabolic equivalent or MET. A MET is a common measurement used by exercise and cardiac specialists. One MET is the amount of energy burned by your body at rest. If you are doing an activity that burns twice that amount, you have reached 2 METS, five times the basal amount would be 5 METS, and so on. Average middle-aged people should be able to easily reach 9 to 10 METS on an exercise test.

Getting back to the researchers, they kept tabs on the men for seven years. For each 1 MET increase in exercise duration on the treadmill test, there was a 12 percent lower risk of dying during the seven years after. The most fit veterans had a 61 percent lower risk of dying—that’s an astounding decrease of two-thirds!—compared to the least fit group.

As for the men who were out of shape at the beginning of the study and who worked on their fitness over the following seven years: They had a much lower risk of dying than those who remained in poor shape.76

It’s pretty powerful data, and I hope it inspires you to grab your shoes and get moving.

Think of exercise, however you like to do it, as a powerful medicine. Gym shoes, racquets, yoga mats, bicycles, dance floors, gardening tools, and barbells are real treatments of so many chronic conditions. Fitness activities can help you manage all of the following indicators of heart health:

Blood pressure. As I’ve said, exercise strengthens your cardiovascular system, allowing the heart to pump more blood with less effort. Some of this comes from training your leg and arm muscles to use oxygen more efficiently. Exercise also helps keep your arteries elastic and flexible, which allows them to expand to accommodate blood flow, again reducing pressure.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.