Make protective vigorous exercise safe….

Today's post:  Tuesday, 8-15-2017

Part One:

*Research has repeatedly found that doing vigorous exercise most days of every week is one of the very best ways to protect your health and slow aging.

Combining effective, progressive strength training for two or more days and short and intense cardio with rests or slower periods, interval or variable cardio for three or four days and some short, brisk walks each week gets the best health results.

Research even has found the more consecutive years you do this without stopping the greater the improvement in HDL increases and LDL and triglyceride reductions this does for you!

*With strength training and resting between sets built in, the key thing to do is to start lifting weights that are easy for you to do and add more slowly but every week.

*With cardio, it’s essential to start a bit easy AND the minute you begin to be out of breath start your rest interval or slow down enough to recover. 

With both, the key is to start easy and make gradual progress every week or two weeks.  With years to make progress, you can afford to avoid rushing things.

In fact, it’s dangerous to way overdo rushing to improve right at first. 

*With strength training you can injure your muscles or tendons or lose control of a weight that’s too heavy and even break bones if you have the weight fall on you. 

*To avoid this, use enough lighter weights to give your system time to acclimate to them.  AND, from first to last, focus as much on tensing your exercised muscles in a way that maximizes your control as you do with how much you are lifting!  In fact it’s acquiring that added control that enables you to gradually lift more.

*With cardio, when you are just beginning and less fit, persisting past the point you become out of breath can cause heart damage or even a heart attack. 

The much better news is that exercising a bit fast or intensely just to the point you get out of breath and then stop or slow way down not only avoids this risk, it makes you fit much faster than hard but steady state cardio!

Part Two:

Most unfortunately, doing this level of intense exercise can be harmful for other reasons.

Under normal conditions, your body rebuilds and repairs when you do these more intense exercises.

But if the damage is boosted and the repair process is shut down, you can cause permanent harm and even die from doing so.

The first way to avoid this is to build up your intensity gradually when you begin to help your body learn to rebuild and repair and do so.

*But you also need to know what drugs cause this to happen and stop taking them immediately and know to not begin taking them.

Statin drugs are on this list.  To be fair, high doses of the ones most often prescribed cause this condition, called Rhabdomyolysis.  But they all tend to cause Rhabdomyolysis in people who do the otherwise safe and protective intense kinds of exercise. (Rhabdomyolysis can kill you and create permanent muscle and kidney damage – even kidney failure.)

Because statin drugs do little for about 60% of the people and are less protective than the diabetes they tend to cause for everyone AND we know things that are MUCH more protective, I think almost no one should take statins ever.

It’s much more protective to stop ingesting heart attack starters!  It’s much more protective to eat several servings of organic vegetables a day.  It’s much more protective to eat an inflammation reducing diet only. There are certain supplements that in combination ARE heart protective at that level.  AND, for people who DON’T take statins, vigorous exercise most days of every week is more protective. 

Lastly, no one who does each of these needs to take statins because they are getting something like 40 times better heart protection!

The email I got from the Health Sciences Institute yesterday also said that:

“It's when you try to push yourself beyond your limits that you can get in real trouble. Especially when you're climbing on a bike, maybe for the first time in decades, and trying to keep up with kids who do it every day. “

“…. one of the best ways to make sure you don't become another rhabdo victim is to never let yourself become dehydrated while engaged in any kind of physical activity -- and that means drinking before, during, and after.

The other is to take it slow when starting anything new and listen to what your body is telling you -- which might very well be STOP!

While rhabdo can even happen to professional athletes, it's most likely to hit someone trying something they're not used to, be it volleyball with the grandkids or a spin class with your neighbor.

And even if your idea of a workout is walking to the mailbox, rhabdo is still something you need to know about.

That's because well over 100 drugs can have this serious condition as a side effect, especially statins like Lipitor and Crestor.

I'm sure you've heard about those common debilitating, statin-induced muscle pains. Well, rhabdo is the most serious muscle-damaging statin effect of all.

Other drugs that can trigger this condition include acetaminophen (Tylenol), antidepressants, benzo drugs, and corticosteroids.

Because many OTC pain relievers can also damage the kidneys, experts recommend that you not take NSAIDS such as Advil, Motrin, and Aleve after an extreme workout. If you do develop rhabdo, it will put your kidneys in even greater danger.”

*OTC pain relievers are NOT safe or even as effective as other methods despite their unearned reputation.

“NSAIDS such as Advil, Motrin, and Aleve…” tend to trigger heart damage and heart attacks.  Because the more of them you take the greater this risk, it’s best to simply NOT take them at all.

Eating a low inflammation diet and taking ginger and curcumin reduces inflammation better than OTC drugs.  And these 3 things are heart PROTECTIVE instead.

“…acetaminophen (Tylenol), antidepressants, benzo drugs..” are best to never use or use the absolute minimum amount!:

 Acetaminophen tends to cause liver damage and taking too much can kill you. 

Most antidepressants are SSRI’s which are not effective and have bad side effects.  (In a series of posts ending on 3-7-2017, we detail the long list of things that DO stop depression and are safe to do.)

Benzo drugs have been shown if taken too long or in too high a dose to be a direct cause of Alzheimer’s disease.

So, now avoiding these drugs to help prevent Rhabdomyolysis adds yet another reason NOT to take them.