STRENGTH produces longevity....

Today's post: Friday, 8-8-2008

I once read that people who test as high in grip strength tended to live longer. And, since then my at home upper body strength training workout has always had a set or two of grip and forearm exercises.

Now, it seems that ALL of the strength training I do will help me to live longer.

I got this news last Tuesday in the Total Health Breakthroughs email I get.

Here’s that article. After it I give reasons that explain why I think this effect occurs.

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,

visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com"

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

“The Fountain of Youth is Made of Iron

By Joseph McCaffrey, MD, FACS

Aerobic exercise (walking, jogging, bike riding and such) has long been the darling of the wellness folks. For years, these people wouldn't consider lifting weights. They somehow thought they'd morph into a bodybuilding freak if they so much as touched a dumbbell.

As if…

They also didn't think that muscle mass and strength had much to do with health. More and more evidence shows the error in that way of thinking. A recent long-term study reported in the British Medical Journal adds to this body of evidence.1

In this study, researchers followed 8,762 men between the ages of 20 and 82 years of age for an average of 18.9 years (as I said, this was a long-term study).

When the men signed up for the study, their comprehensive evaluation included measuring upper and lower body strength as well as their performance on a treadmill.

Adjusting for age, the risk of death during the course of the study was highest in the weakest men and lowest in the strongest. This difference persisted even when other factors such as lifestyle, family history, and other medical conditions were allowed for.

The difference persisted even allowing for cardiovascular fitness. That is, the men who were both aerobically fit and strong did better than men who were equally fit aerobically but not as strong.

As I said, this ties in with a lot of other evidence supporting the importance of strength training.

It used to be taught that losing muscle mass and strength was an inevitable part of aging. We now know this isn't the case at all.

Training with weights minimizes the strength loss that would otherwise occur. Studies show resistance training benefits even nursing home residents.

The image of an ideal exercise program has shifted dramatically in the last decade. Gone are the long hours of repetitive aerobic exercise sessions at 60-80% of maximal heart rate.

The new model rests on shorter, more intense, and highly varied exercise periods. It definitely includes resistance training.

Body weight exercises such as squats and pushups are a great beginning. And you'll find many good fitness programs recommended here on the pages of Total Health Breakthroughs. The main thing is to begin. The "use it or lose it" maxim definitely applies to muscle mass and strength.

Reference

BMJ. 2008; 337:a349.

[Ed. Note: Joseph F. McCaffrey, MD, FACS is a board-certified surgeon with extensive experience in alternative medicine, including certification as a HeartMath Trainer. His areas of expertise include mind-body interaction and cognitive restructuring. Dr. McCaffrey strives to help people attain their optimum level of vitality through attention to all aspects of wellness…..] “

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Wow !!

This research pretty well nails it down that being strong will help you live longer.

It’s possible of course that one of the causes of this is that proactive, healthy, and determined people are more likely to exert extra muscular effort when they need to than people who are the reverse. And, being in good health, being proactive, and determined are all factors that tend to help people live longer. It’s also clear such people will be stronger as a result.

So, learning to be proactive, optimistic, and effective at solving problems and achieving your goals will both make you likely to be stronger and likely to live longer.

However, just doing strength training has been proven to make you stronger even at advanced ages, even well over 80 years old as the article refers to. And, doing strength training has several life extending and health protective effects that are known.

In older people being at least moderately strong allows for more ability to go places and do things for oneself. That in turn makes life more interesting, increases self esteem, avoids dependence, and makes you more likely to survive in some kinds of emergencies.

But the longevity producing effects of strength training go beyond that. Although interval cardio has some of the same effects, you can become aerobically fit from the less intense longer sessions that were originally popularized -- which is less effective at producing these effects than strength training. Doing progressive strength training by its nature always produces these effects.

Doing progressive strength training releases growth hormones. This likely increases the growth of new nerves in your brain as we’ve posted about recently. And, it increases your body’s efforts to rebuild and repair itself. Those two effects clearly promote longevity.

And, the combination of this increased growth hormone and physical stress on your bones tends to make them get stronger instead of weaker. Because one cause of death and becoming an invalid for older people is hip and leg fractures, doing progressive strength training, particularly leg exercises or standing when doing upper body exercises, clearly helps prevent this from happening. That also increases longevity.

We’ve often posted here that doing progressive strength training increases your HDL levels. That helps prevent cardiovascular disease or helps to prevent it from getting worse if you already have it.

We also posted once that doing progressive strength training lowers your homocysteine levels. This also helps prevent cardiovascular disease or helps to prevent it from getting worse if you already have it because homocysteine tends to rise to levels too high for good health as you get older otherwise.

It may even be that the combination of increased growth hormone and lowered homocysteine helps prevent your telomeres from fraying at the ends. If that’s true, it literally slows aging by ensuring your cells make the perfect copies that keep you healthy and alive.

No matter how you explain it, it seems crystal clear that strength training will tend to make you live longer.

Strength training increases ENDURANCE....

Today's post: Monday, 6-23-2008

In sports & sometimes in life it can be very desirable to have high levels of endurance.

And, it is true that if you do an endurance related activity such as running & you run regularly, your endurance usually increases as your body gradually becomes more fit to adjust to the running you are doing.

We now know that interval cardio of relatively brief duration is often the fastest & safest way to build this kind of endurance.

But whether people train for endurance the older way or with interval cardio, it’s quite common for them to only do that activity, running, swimming etc & NOT do strength training.

We’ve posted many times on the health benefits of also including strength training as well as cardio or endurance training. So, we have recommended it on that basis & still do.

But today, we have news.

If you strength train the muscles you use in your chosen endurance activity, in addition to all the other benefits of strength training, your ENDURANCE when using that muscle also goes up more than it would have if you only trained directly for endurance.

We’ll comment on probable reasons why that’s so in a bit.

(There is even reason to think your endurance in all the rest of your body will improve to some degree as well.)

First here’s the article with the news.:

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

“Runners Need Strength Training

By Craig Ballantyne

Runners are notorious for trying anything to improve performance, from eating "power gel" to buying space-aged shoes. But most runners are missing one key performance booster: strength training.

In a study published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers had eight subjects (four men and four women) perform heavy barbell squats three times per week for eight weeks in addition to their regular endurance training. A control group did only the endurance workouts.

Not surprisingly, the strength-training group got stronger (by an average of 33.2 percent in the squat). However, it was a surprise that these men and women also increased their endurance by an average of 21.3 percent. In comparison, the control group did not get stronger or increase their endurance.

This study proves that strength training will make you stronger and improve your endurance - and that will make you a better runner. All it takes is three strength workouts per week for eight weeks, focusing on an exercise such as squats or split-squats.

[Ed. Note: Long, slow cardio is NOT going to help you get healthy. But strength training and short-burst interval training can. ....]”

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It’s very useful to know this tested as happening as there might have been something that prevented this effect.

But it’s not surprising that this is the case either.

Here’s why. When you do strength training, several things occur that all are likely to increase your endurance as well.

1. If you do progressive strength training, eventually each set other than warm ups or take it easy sets requires considerable effort to do that last few repetitions. And, you often have to support this effort by breathing harder & having your heart rate increase. This is exactly the same set of things that happens in progressive interval cardio (or aerobic) exercise that directly increases endurance.

2. If you do progressive strength training, your body releases growth hormone that improves all of your physical systems somewhat in addition to greater improvement on the body part you are exerting force with.

3. When your muscle gets stronger, it does so by either growing in size or by responding more efficiently to the orders your nervous system gives it – or both.
That means that any endurance activity you do with that muscle is then easier to do. That means that the endurance activity will improve as it simply becomes a bit easier to do.

To use his example, without strength training in addition, running a given distance is perhaps like running slightly uphill. But running that distance after also strength training is more like running on flat ground or even slightly down hill.

So, since it’s simply easier to do, you will go faster or be able to run farther or both.