Labels: eat to protect your heart, how to exercise safely, how to make exercise even more effective at protecting your heart, prevent heart attacks
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
Exercise
to protect your heart more safely and effectively....
Today's
Post: Tuesday, 6-5-2012
Exercise to protect
your heart is one of the most effective ways to do so.
A. But it can be risky and create the reverse
effect under some circumstances.
1. Recently a study was done which found that in
one set of 6 studies of exercise and heart risk measures: blood pressure, insulin levels, HDL
cholesterol, and triglyceride, “about 10 percent actually
got worse on at least one of the measures….&…” About 7 percent got worse on
at least two measures”
2. In some people, shoveling snow and long runs
have caused fatal heart attacks. And,
studies of long distance runners have found several kinds of indicators of
heart damage.
So how do you make
sense of this and get the heart protection exercise can offer without the risks
or make the risks much less likely?
1. Clearly the exercisers in the first set of
studies had recently added exercise in order to get this kind of before and
after comparison.
There are 4
explanations that occur to me.
First, note that
changes for the worst only happened in 10 % of the people. So despite the fact it sounds bad, most
people who begin to exercise escape it.
Second, some people
new to exercise overdo how much they exercise or how fast they ramp up the
effort or duration of the exercise.
If you overtax your
heart longer than it has the capacity for, it can cause damage or even a heart
attack. (This is clearly what happens to
snow shovelers and many long distance racers.
We’ll come back to that point later.
Avoiding this kind of overstress is a BIG key to exercising safely and
in a way that strengthens your heart.)
Third, some people
may knock loose some plaque or show initial recovery stress more than
others. The good news for this is that
adding some other ways to improve these measures and continuing to exercise
long enough will reverse the problem.
Four, some people
who exercise then eat more of fattening and harmful treat foods than the
protection they get from the exercise can cover. (For example if you walk two miles and then
eat a large piece of pie as a reward, between the sugar and the refined grain
in the pie and pie crust and the over 300 to 500 calories in the pie, you will
then get fatter. And with the sugar and
the refined grain and often the hydrogenated oils in the crust, it will tend to
boost your insulin and triglycerides and lower your HDL more than the exercise
did the reverse.)
2. If you overtax your heart longer than it has
the capacity for, it can cause damage or even a heart attack. (This is clearly what happens to snow
shovelers and many long distance racers.)
Your heart can
crank up intense effort for short periods of time. And if you then let it rest, it can even do
it again safely.
And as long as you
do it lightly enough and rest soon enough, unless you were right on the verge
of a heart attack when you began, your heart will make itself stronger both in
how much it can ramp up and how long it can stay ramped up.
People who have heart
problems while shoveling snow often start with untrained hearts and then cut
themselves no rest breaks at all.
The good news is
that you can feel the effect, your heart rate speeds up noticeably and you get
out of breath. So notice if that happens
after say 5 shovel-fulls. Then stop and
rest until your heart rate and breathing get back to normal. Then do 3 shovel fulls and rest and repeat
that. If you are out of shape, you may
find you have stop before the snow is gone.
Or you may need long enough rest breaks that you run out of time before
the snow is gone. But you will make some
progress on removing the snow and avoid triggering a heart attack!
The better news is
that if you do comparable interval cardio as an exercise that you do several
times a week for a couple of years, you will then be able to do 5 shovel fulls
and only rest for 5 seconds and still do it safely. But shoveling snow is enough work, the short
and regular rest breaks are essential.
Long distance
running races are NOT good health protecting exercise because as many people do
them, there are none of these kind of rest breaks for your heart.
Conversely, one
study found that runners who ran shorter runs totaling up to 20 miles a week
did get health protection and a lower overall chance of death. And, since those were exercise runs and not
races, people doing them could alternate a moderate or high moderate pace with
faster sections several times during each run.
The good news is
that by doing very vigorous exercise you build up to and alternate that with
rest or a much easier effort, you can get quite fit with 3 or 4 sessions of
this kind of interval cardio a week with sessions of only 10 minutes each.
If you have time,
doing a lot of walking too helps; and it’s moderate enough to not tax your
heart unless you are massively overfat.
There are other
kinds of interval cardio. But Dr Al
Sears’s PACE program and his articles on it is an excellent source for the
information here.
It also helps that
I’ve also experienced these effects personally while exercising and doing
strenuous yardwork.
B. You can stop doing things that harm your
heart or make it less safe to exercise and do or begin to do things that
protect your heart and make it safer to exercise.
Other studies show
that continuing to get vigorous exercise every week with this approach not only
moves all your heart risk indicators to more positive levels, it does so more
every year you continue to do it.
Properly done -- and with the right support -- regular vigorous exercise
will improve ALL of your heart indicators and do it safely.
a) One half of this
is to stop doing things that harm your heart as soon as you even think of
exercising and stay stopped as long as you do vigorous exercise.
1 & 2: The two worst things to stop are exposure to
tobacco smoke and ingesting any hydrogenated oils.
Exposure to tobacco
smoke, even from second hand smoke, actively works to create small particle LDL
and deposits it into your blood vessel walls.
Avoiding tobacco smoke totally or virtually always even for second hand
smoke makes it MUCH safer to exercise.
(And, if you quit, gradually getting into exercise once you stop will
double your chances of quitting and begin to repair some of the damage.)
Eating hydrogenated
oils and trans fats actively works to create small particle LDL and deposits it
into your blood vessel walls. Find out
how to ingest NONE of this stuff and do it and exercising will become far
safer. Avoid most commercial baked goods
since most of it still uses shortening which is all hydrogenated oil. And, always read labels when the food has
one. If it lists ANY trans fat reading
but zero OR any hydrogenated oils don’t buy it or eat it. (Zero means less than
half a gram of trans fats per serving. So if it contains any hydrogenated oils,
it can have significant amount of trans fats & usually does even if it SAYS
zero.)
3. Ingesting high fructose corn syrup or
artificial sweeteners or refined grains is double nasty.
(So is eating real
sugar. So minimize how much you
eat. Eat 7 tablespoons a month or less
instead of 7 tablespoons a day!)
Ingesting these
things tends to cause high blood sugar which adds a harmful version of LDL to
your blood cells which causes or worsens heart disease.
Even worse, ingesting
these things boosts your triglycerides a lot and lowers HDL. That means that, just like tobacco smoke and
hydrogenated oils, ingesting these things often works to create small particle
LDL and deposits it into your blood vessel walls.
If you stop ingesting
these things, that too will make exercising to protect your heart safer and
work better.
Stopping these
blood sugar boosters and stopping trans fats and hydrogenated oils also helps a
lot in losing fat and keeping it off.
That helps keep your blood pressure down and cuts your heart some slack
when you aren’t exercising.
b) You can also eat
foods and nutrients that make exercising safer and more heart protective.
1. Eating or taking antioxidant nutrients and
enough health OK protein and oils or fats makes your ability to exercise safely
greater.
Studies have found
that people taking vitamin C and E and selenium and who eat a lot of vegetables
and some fruit tend to be able to exercise more without it depressing their
immune system and slowing their recovery time from exercise. Eating foods high in these things does even
more to protect your health because of the very large number of added nutrients
plus the vitamins and minerals they have.
2. Whole eggs, wild caught fish, beans and
lentils and black-eyed peas, and for those not allergic nuts, and nonfat and
low fat dairy gives your body the protein it needs to recover from exercise.
3. And, it’s easier to stay on an eating plan
that has some fats and oils. And omega
3 and monosaturated oils are actually good for you. Extra virgin olive oil, wild caught fish,
omega 3 supplements, and if you aren’t allergic nuts, and avocados all fit
here. (Unfortunately, fats from grain fed animals and cheap vegetable oils such
as corn and soy are too high in omega 6 oils which cause inflammation. That inflammation causes heart disease. So
here again making only the health
supporting choices makes exercising for heart protection safer.)
4. Real niacin even in 300 mg amounts taken
after meals is unusually heart protective because it boosts HDL and lowers LDL
and triglycerides. It also has been
shown to lower the overall death rate of people who take it.
And, if your total
LDL is over 100, taking sterol supplements lowers LDL significantly but with
virtually no side effects.
Doing those two
things in addition to the others listed here makes exercise for heart health
dramatically safer and so much more effective it’s as if the exercise has a
supporting wind at your back.
Bottom line, you
CAN exercise more safely and get better heart protection if you know how do it.
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