Exercise is a gateway to health....Today's post:  Tuesday, 5-22-2018

A.  Already known ways exercise gives you good health:

1.  Consistently, studies have found that doing effective strength training as few as two times a week with an intervening day to recover and doing some form of brief but vigorous cardio as few as three or four days a week and doing it every week or very close to it, has almost magical powers to benefit good health.

2.  Eating enough protein and organic vegetables and fruit and taking antioxidant supplements as well increases the health effects of this kind of exercise and avoids problems.

3.  Following a low inflammation lifestyle and avoiding things that boost it also increases the health effects this kind of exercise and avoids problems.

4.  To gain the best health benefits without exercise, studies show you’ll get best results by eating 6 to 9 servings a day of organic vegetables of different kinds -- IF you don’t exercise too.

But a study found people who exercise in this way only need to eat two to four servings a day of organic vegetables of different kinds to get those effects!  That makes it much more doable!

5.  People who exercise in this way live up to decades longer and have less chance of getting heart disease, Alzheimer’s and strokes an impressive study from Stanford found. 

It was impressive precisely because the study was of Stanford professors and staff. Both the ones who exercised in this way and those who did not had an above average income and lifestyle and access to medical care.  Yet the exercisers remained healthy and active and alive many years longer!

(We now know that exercise plus good nutrition tends to keep your telomeres long and your mitochondria healthy and to release the brain and nerve growth hormone BDNF.  Every one of those effects slows aging.)

6.  Another study found that people who exercised in this way every year tended to get better and better readings on HDL and LDL cholesterol each year until they were at unusually low risk of heart disease and strokes.

B.  More studies just released show even more health benefits of exercise:

1.  If your blood vessels become stiff and coated with calcium deposits, your blood pressure goes up; and your risk of fatal heart disease and strokes goes up as well.  This is also a cause of moving stiffly and slowly in older people.

A recent study found that even two or three days a week of exercise tended to prevent this to some degree. 

And at least four or five days a week of exercise was even more effective AND included preventing this in the blood vessels that serve your heart and other internal organs!

(This helps explain the anti-aging effects and the continuous reducing of heart attack risks of regular exercise!)

Note that you can increase this protection by taking vitamin K2 along with vitamin D3.   Vitamin K2 acts like a traffic cop by causing calcium in your blood to leave your blood vessel walls and strengthen your bones instead!  Besides exercise, beginning vitamin K2 reduces calcium deposits in your blood vessels in just a few weeks after you begin to take it.

AND, note that it’s been found that taking statins worsens this by depleting vitamin K2.  That’s why studies show taking statins worsens this and is another reason why taking statins is a mostly ineffective way to protect against heart attacks.

2.  Another new study also found that people who do regular exercise tend to prevent heart disease and dementia. 

But this study also added that regular exercise prevented the kind of frailty in older people that limits their lives and puts them into some kind of assisted living!

They found this even for people who do a mix of exercises.  But as readers of this blog know, effective strength training, particularly for your legs and hips and lower back does this even more!

3.  The third benefit of exercise that was in the news just day before yesterday in the Style section of the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Shari Shyrock, a personal trainer who uses strength training well and has many years of experience said in her experience only her clients who exercise tend to eat right.

Studies over 50 years ago found this effect! 

If people began even a little bit of exercise and kept doing it, a miraculous effect happened.

Without any apparent effort, they found they were able to eat better and some even quit smoking.

Since then the social scientists have found why this occurs.  Once someone begins to exercise regularly they explain this to themselves as “That means I am the kind of person who acts to protect my health.”

Then, once that happens, taking other health benefitting actions fits their new self image.  Those actions become “normal” and easy to do.

C. We just did a couple of posts on a way women, and men too*, can begin effective strength training at home with no equipment needed.

“Begin a trial to learn to do “women’s” pushups. 

Do this once a day for about one minute three days this week and next.

Do this for the next two weeks.  Sure you can get surprisingly strong after that if you like following the descriptions listed last in this post.

Since it only takes one minute two or three days a week and there’s nothing to buy or wait to get,

this is quite doable.

But for today, just make a commitment to do this for just two weeks. Start this week!

To begin, do two or three of what the yoga people call the “Lion’s pose.”

Lie face down with your hands just a bit wider than your shoulders as if you were doing a regular pushup.

Then, using the muscles in the back of your neck and lower back pull your head up until you are looking towards the wall in front of you.  Then without lifting your hips at all push down until your arms are fully extended.

Hold it for just a bit and then do two or three more.

At first stop there if you like.  It takes less than one minute to do and one minute to get into position do that and stand back up.

For today, just make a commitment to do this for just two weeks.

I put this last for two reasons. 

It’s so easy to do –

and has such profound effects on your self- image,

if you only keep doing only one of these actions after the first two weeks, keep doing the pushups!

If you keep doing a few more each time, you’ll get to where you can do 25 of these each time.

Then, when that happens, use your back to lift your hips and knees an inch or two off the floor.  Let yourself down until just your knees touch and push back up with your arms. Keep the arch and your head up looking at the wall in front of you.

Next time start this by pushing up with your arms for that few inches.

Unlike regular pushups this does not tend to injure your shoulders or take great arm strength.

Yet it does build the pectoral muscles that do the push down movement quite well.

Keep adding a few each time until you can do 25.  Then add one or two each week.

(You can actually get stronger doing these than many men who don’t exercise without ever doing regular pushups!)

This is surprisingly easy to do AND research shows doing this kind of brief exercise is a keystone habit that makes doing more of the other things easy!

Instead of thinking of eating better as hard or something you don’t do, you begin to think of yourself as someone who can take control of your health and does so. 

At that point you’ll find eating better and dropping the harmful things is easy because it fits your new self image.” 

*I’m a man and am 74 years old according to the calendar and used this method of doing pushups for the past few months.

I went from a bit over 50 to 187 this past Monday.  And I added an inch of muscle on my chest in that time.

So, I can say confidently that this exercise works for men too!