Do vigorous exercise safely ….
Welcome to our health & self help blog.
Focus on Your Health:
In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
Today's post: Tuesday, 11-14-2006
Do vigorous exercise safely ….
Vigorous or more challenging exercise can & usually does benefit you more than mild or not very challenging exercise.
But it’s important to do more intense exercise in ways that are likely to do you more good than harm. And, this is more true for the more intense exercises than for mild ones.
There are some risks to avoid. Here are some of the effective ways to do that.
1. Build up to intense or very vigorous exercise gradually & exercise regularly.
You are much more likely to avoid injury or overtaxing your immune system if you do that.
(As people get older, those who only get exercise by doing sports activities on some weekends tend to get injured a lot. Building up gradually & exercising regularly sharply cuts your chance of injury.
If you build up to a very vigorous level gradually, you can exercise at a level that you & your body now experience as an 85 percent effort but would have been a 98 percent effort initially. And, at an 85 percent level of effort, your immune system gets a boost while at 98 percent & higher you can actually lower your immunity.)
You are much more likely to avoid triggering a heart attack if you do that. AND if you take action in other ways to dramatically reduce your heart attack risk as you build up the intensity of your exercise, by the time you’ve worked up the intensity, you will have enough protection to make it much safer.
2. Particularly if you are male or are over 40, be sure to take other actions to lower your risk of heart disease.
(If you’ve already been diagnosed with heart disease or are over forty & over fat, you need to be considerably more careful with exercise & taking action to protect your heart before you crank up the intensity of your exercise too much.
It’s a bit of a catch 22. Vigorous exercise boosts HDL’s & reduces your chance of a heart attack. But very vigorous exercise in people on the verge of a heart attack & who haven’t built up to it gradually can & has triggered heart attacks—some of them fatal.)
Find out what your blood levels of HDL & LDL cholesterol are & your homocysteine & fasting glucose & HBA1C levels are. Then take every action that will put you into the desirable range that doesn’t involve drugs.
Then get retested until you get there. And then get checked every 6 months to a year to be sure you stay in the desirable range.
And, if your check shows you are in the danger range for LDL cholesterol or fasting glucose & HBA1C you may need drugs also.
But if you do enough of the nondrug things to be effective, that need for durgs may be temporary. Lastly, if you are on drugs AND do the effective nondrug things like eating right & regular exercise etc, your health protection is MUCH better than with the drugs alone.
(Several of our posts have been on raising HDL cholesterol & lowering too high homocysteine levels because doing those two things is the most protective thing you can do for your heart & health. And many of those same actions also help keep your blood sugar levels under control.
And, a personal note: When I was younger & could still run for exercise without getting overuse injuries, I saw that some runners died of heart attacks. The reason I’ve taken action to reduce my risk & continue to learn how to do so better is precisely because I want to have the considerable benefits of vigorous exercise without it triggering a heart attack.)
3. Train at a high moderate level of intensity most of the time rather than at an extremely high level of intensity.
And, do your highest intensity exercise in shorter bursts with rest or more moderate intensity levels in between.
This is not only far safer, I’ve seen several reports that this method increases your fitness level MUCH faster than working out at a steady intensity level.
4. Eat plenty of vegetables & whole fruits that are high in antioxidants & take antioxidant vitamins & supplements.
Dr Kenneth Cooper of Aerobics fame & his Cooper Clinics in Dallas came up with this one.
They reported that exercise increases oxidation & that many of the exercisers who did the most or the most vigorous exercises began to have negative health effects. But making sure the people in their programs took in lots of antioxidants effectively prevented this.
This also helps prevent your most vigorous exercise from lowering your immune system. So you get fewer colds.
In our SuperFoods series in April of this year we covered many of the vegetables that are high in mixed carotenoids & the fruits that are high in vitamin C & other antioxidants. (Blue berries, broccoli, sweet potatoes, cooked tomatoes, & avocados are good examples from this list. And, there are many more.)
Each day, taking vitamin C; 200 iu of natural vitamin E, making sure you get at least 10,000 iu of vitamin A (not beta carotene), 200 mcg of selenium; & 200 mg of alpha lipoic acid also helps.
There are many other reasons to take B vitamins & CoQ10 each day. And, CoQ10 in particular is also an antioxidant. Both have heart protective benefits as well.
(5,000 or 10,000 iu of beta carotene is probably OK if your multivitamin has that. But the best health effects come from eating a variety of foods that contain mixed carotenoids, NOT from taking more beta carotene than that in supplement form.)
5. Aim for exercise that stimulates your body & produces good health & avoid exercise that produces injury.
Michael Masterson, writing in the online newsletter Early to Rise, points out that he insists that any personal trainer he keeps push him hard enough he gets good results but to also be extremely careful to avoid doing so in a way that produces injury.
In doing vigorous exercise yourself, that’s also superb advice to run your own exercise program by.
***********
Some of you may be new to exercise or you may need some ideas to help you make more & better progress with your exercise goals.
Or, if you need inspiration or some ideas on an exercise plan that fits you, here’s a resource that many have found to work well:
Exercise expert Jon Benson has co-authored an ebook that has some guidelines on how to get good results from exercise.
But, here’s the exciting thing about his book:
He also has tons of people of both sexes & many ages who got well -- & discarded excess fat – by exercising -- tell their stories of how they got into exercise & what exactly they do in their exercise programs. It also has their very good results. Some got incredibly good results.
There are enough role models & ideas you are virtually certain to find one or several that are enough similar to you that you can do it too & see exactly how people who are like you & started where you are or maybe even at a worse level were able to do it.
Does that sound like it’s worth checking out?
If so, here’s more information on Jon’s book. See: http://www.fitover40.com/aff/iehealth
Focus on Your Health:
In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
Today's post: Tuesday, 11-14-2006
Do vigorous exercise safely ….
Vigorous or more challenging exercise can & usually does benefit you more than mild or not very challenging exercise.
But it’s important to do more intense exercise in ways that are likely to do you more good than harm. And, this is more true for the more intense exercises than for mild ones.
There are some risks to avoid. Here are some of the effective ways to do that.
1. Build up to intense or very vigorous exercise gradually & exercise regularly.
You are much more likely to avoid injury or overtaxing your immune system if you do that.
(As people get older, those who only get exercise by doing sports activities on some weekends tend to get injured a lot. Building up gradually & exercising regularly sharply cuts your chance of injury.
If you build up to a very vigorous level gradually, you can exercise at a level that you & your body now experience as an 85 percent effort but would have been a 98 percent effort initially. And, at an 85 percent level of effort, your immune system gets a boost while at 98 percent & higher you can actually lower your immunity.)
You are much more likely to avoid triggering a heart attack if you do that. AND if you take action in other ways to dramatically reduce your heart attack risk as you build up the intensity of your exercise, by the time you’ve worked up the intensity, you will have enough protection to make it much safer.
2. Particularly if you are male or are over 40, be sure to take other actions to lower your risk of heart disease.
(If you’ve already been diagnosed with heart disease or are over forty & over fat, you need to be considerably more careful with exercise & taking action to protect your heart before you crank up the intensity of your exercise too much.
It’s a bit of a catch 22. Vigorous exercise boosts HDL’s & reduces your chance of a heart attack. But very vigorous exercise in people on the verge of a heart attack & who haven’t built up to it gradually can & has triggered heart attacks—some of them fatal.)
Find out what your blood levels of HDL & LDL cholesterol are & your homocysteine & fasting glucose & HBA1C levels are. Then take every action that will put you into the desirable range that doesn’t involve drugs.
Then get retested until you get there. And then get checked every 6 months to a year to be sure you stay in the desirable range.
And, if your check shows you are in the danger range for LDL cholesterol or fasting glucose & HBA1C you may need drugs also.
But if you do enough of the nondrug things to be effective, that need for durgs may be temporary. Lastly, if you are on drugs AND do the effective nondrug things like eating right & regular exercise etc, your health protection is MUCH better than with the drugs alone.
(Several of our posts have been on raising HDL cholesterol & lowering too high homocysteine levels because doing those two things is the most protective thing you can do for your heart & health. And many of those same actions also help keep your blood sugar levels under control.
And, a personal note: When I was younger & could still run for exercise without getting overuse injuries, I saw that some runners died of heart attacks. The reason I’ve taken action to reduce my risk & continue to learn how to do so better is precisely because I want to have the considerable benefits of vigorous exercise without it triggering a heart attack.)
3. Train at a high moderate level of intensity most of the time rather than at an extremely high level of intensity.
And, do your highest intensity exercise in shorter bursts with rest or more moderate intensity levels in between.
This is not only far safer, I’ve seen several reports that this method increases your fitness level MUCH faster than working out at a steady intensity level.
4. Eat plenty of vegetables & whole fruits that are high in antioxidants & take antioxidant vitamins & supplements.
Dr Kenneth Cooper of Aerobics fame & his Cooper Clinics in Dallas came up with this one.
They reported that exercise increases oxidation & that many of the exercisers who did the most or the most vigorous exercises began to have negative health effects. But making sure the people in their programs took in lots of antioxidants effectively prevented this.
This also helps prevent your most vigorous exercise from lowering your immune system. So you get fewer colds.
In our SuperFoods series in April of this year we covered many of the vegetables that are high in mixed carotenoids & the fruits that are high in vitamin C & other antioxidants. (Blue berries, broccoli, sweet potatoes, cooked tomatoes, & avocados are good examples from this list. And, there are many more.)
Each day, taking vitamin C; 200 iu of natural vitamin E, making sure you get at least 10,000 iu of vitamin A (not beta carotene), 200 mcg of selenium; & 200 mg of alpha lipoic acid also helps.
There are many other reasons to take B vitamins & CoQ10 each day. And, CoQ10 in particular is also an antioxidant. Both have heart protective benefits as well.
(5,000 or 10,000 iu of beta carotene is probably OK if your multivitamin has that. But the best health effects come from eating a variety of foods that contain mixed carotenoids, NOT from taking more beta carotene than that in supplement form.)
5. Aim for exercise that stimulates your body & produces good health & avoid exercise that produces injury.
Michael Masterson, writing in the online newsletter Early to Rise, points out that he insists that any personal trainer he keeps push him hard enough he gets good results but to also be extremely careful to avoid doing so in a way that produces injury.
In doing vigorous exercise yourself, that’s also superb advice to run your own exercise program by.
***********
Some of you may be new to exercise or you may need some ideas to help you make more & better progress with your exercise goals.
Or, if you need inspiration or some ideas on an exercise plan that fits you, here’s a resource that many have found to work well:
Exercise expert Jon Benson has co-authored an ebook that has some guidelines on how to get good results from exercise.
But, here’s the exciting thing about his book:
He also has tons of people of both sexes & many ages who got well -- & discarded excess fat – by exercising -- tell their stories of how they got into exercise & what exactly they do in their exercise programs. It also has their very good results. Some got incredibly good results.
There are enough role models & ideas you are virtually certain to find one or several that are enough similar to you that you can do it too & see exactly how people who are like you & started where you are or maybe even at a worse level were able to do it.
Does that sound like it’s worth checking out?
If so, here’s more information on Jon’s book. See: http://www.fitover40.com/aff/iehealth
posted by David at 1:29 PM
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