Look younger, be healthier, and live longer....

Today's Post: Thursday, 1-13-2011

Believe it or not, there are FIVE ways to do that triple of desirable things.

Here are three you likely already know about if you have been reading our posts or because they are simply better known.

1. Lose excess fat if you have it -- or avoid getting it if you don’t.

2. Get regular exercise every week, particularly vigorous exercise -- and keep doing it.

3. Completely avoid tobacco smoke -- both smoking and second hand smoke.

4. Yesterday we posted on the fact that people who eat lots of vegetables with carotenes wind up with higher blood levels of alpha carotene. Research recently found they are much less likely to die from any cause and have better health -- including being far less likely to get cancer or die from any cancers they do get.

We also covered how many other carotenes in these vegetables help too and some tips on which vegetables these are and how to add more to your food and drink.

5. Today we post on ways to keep your telomeres from getting shorter or which even restore them and make them a bit longer.

In fact staying trim, getting regular exercise, and eating lots of vegetables with carotenes likely each has this effect. And, exposure to tobacco smoke almost certainly shortens your telomeres.

(If you are unaware, here are what telomeres are and how keeping them long tends to prevent or slow aging. Aging happens when your body begins to make imperfect copies of your cells. Eventually you get cells that don’t work and have problems including death. But the DNA in your cells has a kind of shoelace cap or damage preventer at its ends. Those are called telomeres. If they are intact, your body keeps making accurate and properly functioning new cells. So keeping your telomeres long enough prevents aging. And, slowing how fast they get shorter or wear off slows aging.)

Last Tuesday, Al Sears posted on some other things that either cause your body to make more telomerase which makes telomeres longer or prevents them from getting shorter or which have been found to keep telomeres longer in that way and perhaps others.


In a long-term study, Danish researchers discovered that twins who looked younger than their chronological age had better health and longer survival rates than their older-looking twins. Also, the larger the difference in the age they looked to be, the more likely it was that the older-looking twin died first.

They also found that the twins who looked younger had longer telomeres.

Doctor Sears then listed several ways to either boost telomerase or maintain the telomere length in the DNA of your cells.

“One way is to activate telomerase. Telomerase is an enzyme found in all of your cells that tells your telomeres to rebuild themselves. Once activated, telomerase can actually make your cells – and your body – younger.”

In a recent study at the University of California-Davis, found people doing meditation had 33 percent higher telomerase activity in their white blood cells than those who weren’t meditating.

(Most people haven’t got the time to meditate or aren’t good at it. Here are two solutions:

Listen to the guided meditations on audios by Dharma Singh Khalsa, MD which are only 12 minutes long and have different themes to fit what you need most when you do them.

You can also learn Tai Chi which is a kind of slow exercise routine that both gives you the effect of mediation and provides about the same exercise as walking for the time you put in. So if you haven’t time to do both meditation AND get exercise, doing a daily Tai Chi routine can work well.)

Dr Sears then gave an even more time efficient method that also works.:

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that daily supplements of omega-3 significantly increased telomerase activity.

(Eating wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils two or three times a week also works. Two good providers of omega 3 supplements are Nordic Naturals and Carlson. I have been doing both by eating wild caught salmon three times a week and taking omega 3 supplements from Nordic Naturals twice a day.

And I was doing that for the other health benefits of omega 3 before I found it that it may also help keep me younger.)

He then listed more three things that have been found to keep your telomeres long.:

1. A new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that people who take a daily multivitamin had younger DNA and had 5.1 percent longer telomeres than non-users.

Dr Sears then noted this:

“When you….buy a multivitamin, stay away from discount store brands … they are inexpensive because those companies buy the cheapest, synthetic ingredients on the international market. This is one area where I don’t recommend cutting corners. Stick with a brand you know and trust.”

2. That American Journal of Clinical Nutrition study was full of good news. It turns out that vitamin B12 supplements increase telomere length.

(To get the full effect of B12 supplements get the kind you can suck on or chew and hold in your mouth a bit. That way you get the B12 directly while older people or people taking anti acid drugs may not get the B12 from digesting it. 500 mcg twice a day or 1,000 mcg once a day works.)

Vitamins C and E also increase the lifespan of cells by preventing telomere shortening.

(2,000 mg of vitamin C in four 500 mg a day works well. And, taking a natural vitamin E supplement of 200 iu a day and eating health OK foods high in the entire vitamin E complex such as walnuts, pecans, almonds, avocados, and extra virgin olive oil will work well.)

3. In another study, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked at more than 2,000 women of all ages.

“The more vitamin D they had in their bodies, the longer their telomeres were. On top of that, people who supplemented with vitamin D had longer telomeres than those who didn’t.5

If you’d like to get your vitamin D in a supplement, make sure it’s vitamin D3 (Cholecalciferol). I usually start my patients with 2,000 IUs a day and work up from there if blood levels aren’t responding. Blood levels are helpful to tell you how much you need to take.”

Your body will use at least 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D and other studies indicate that up to 10,000 iu a day is safe while yet others show that the real minimum amount needed for good health is the 2,000 iu a day Dr Sears begins with.

(To put it bluntly, the recent so called guidelines posted saying lower levels of vitamin D are correct was done by researchers who were either not competent enough to know the literature or all the relevant studies OR they were biased.)
Dr Sears also makes the point that the vitamins he lists are all antioxidants.

That would suggest that other antioxidant supplements would help do the job.

And, there is some evidence for that!

Dharma Singh Khalsa, MD said in a recent email that the antioxidant glutathione produced in your body by taking the supplement NAC (n-acetyl cysteine), has been found to maintain telomere length.

And, in another email, Dr Sears himself posted on research showing that taking the far more effective form of CoQ10 called ubiquinol dramatically slows aging.

(Ubiquinol is what your body turns CoQ10 into that actually does the job. It’s been found up to EIGHT times as effective to take it compared to taking CoQ10.)

Ubiquinol is both a strong antioxidant AND it slows aging by keeping the mitochondria in each of your cells delivering energy to them as it should which is also an anti-aging effect.

Best of all, just like omega 3 supplements and foods, each of these supplements has abundant OTHER health benefits that keep you healthy in other ways.

Slow aging with exercise & more....

Today's Post, Tuesday, 6-2-2009

Yesterday’s post on fat loss had this on the best kind of exercise to help you lose fat.:

“2. The most effective kinds of exercise to lose bodyfat, lose internal fat, and turn off insulin resistance have a key similarity. They may not last huge amounts of time. But they are vigorous and can be safe once you build up to it gradually and keep the high intensity per time brief.

What exercises do that?

Interval cardio, progressive strength training, playing competitive sports, jumping rope, using a mini-trampoline, quite brisk execution of martial arts moves or routines such as Tae Bo or Karate or Kung Fu all work.

And, many of these are in fact on record as being effective at losing fat and belly fat.”

Now, here’s the surprise. These kinds of exercise also help dramatically slow aging.

These exercises cause your body to release growth hormone. That triggers repairs all throughout your body. And that works best for creating these repairs, muscle growth and fat loss when you also eat enough protein.

Meanwhile, guess what happens to people who don’t do these kinds of exercises every week? The repairs don’t happen or happen as much and those people begin to age faster due to undone maintenance repairs that gradually build up.

Then there’s the new brain cells and nerves that kind of exercise causes you to grow. That keeps you mentally sharp and mentally younger. In addition, this means that you maintain better control over your muscles and maintain your muscle speed better. Athletes talk about “losing a step” as they get older. But if you do these kinds of exercises, that happens much, much less.

And this also creates increased longevity. A recent study of runners found that they outlived non-exercisers by as much as 15 or 20 years.

In addition, today I read that exercise virtually halts or reverses one part of aging in today’s email issue of TotalHealthBreakthroughs.

Here’s the actual article so you can see for yourself.:

"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 ."


"The Fountain of Youth? Hit the Weight Room!

By Missy Hawthorne, RN, CSCS

Are you a proud member of the “baby boom” generation? Well if so, congratulations! You and 78.2 million of your closest friends make up the bulk of this country's population, and the oldest of you turned 60 just a few short years ago! Turning 50, 60 or 70 for that matter is a wonderful milestone for which you should be proud. But as proud as you may be, aging brings some physical changes we may not be quite ready for, or ready to accept.

Have you noticed fine lines around the eyes, or your pants fitting a little tighter? Do your joints ache as you climb stairs, or do you find yourself bracing your back as you stoop to pick up the morning paper? And where did your strength go? Have your muscles vanished?

These realities and many more begin to haunt us at about age 40 and can continue to worsen with aging. Is there any way to slow things down? Ah, the fountain of youth! If only we could simply take a drink!

Studies and surveys I have come across of baby boomers' attitudes indicate that most of them are trying to be very proactive and slow their physical aging process as much as possible. One of the areas in which that's really important is muscle preservation.

As we age, we lose muscle mass and muscular strength leading to impairment in some activities of daily living. This natural age-related loss of muscle mass, strength and muscle function is called sarcopenia. The level of sarcopenia will greatly affect a person's ability to live and function independently as they grow older.

Research suggests the causes of sarcopenia are related not just to inactivity, but to oxidative stress (a condition in which antioxidant levels are lower than normal), inflammation, alterations in protein turnover, and dysfunction of mitochondria (the ATP energy factory in cells).1 And believe it or not, resistance training has been shown to not only reduce some of that oxidative stress, it reverses aging of the muscles on a genetic level.

One study compared 25 active older subjects (average age 68) to 26 younger subjects (average age 24). After a thorough medical evaluation including a graded exercise test, all subjects performed a supervised resistance training program on two non-consecutive days per week for 26 weeks.

All major muscle groups were included in the workout, beginning with single-set training which started out at more moderate levels and worked up to more intense levels. At the end of 26 weeks, the subjects underwent a muscle biopsy and RNA was extracted for analysis.

The biopsies revealed that resistance training not only slowed the process of aging, but actually reversed aging in something called the transcription RNA profile of the genes. The transcription profile looked like the RNA of a much younger person after the six months of resistance training, and the mitochondrial function of the cells was much improved. These changes translated into improved muscle strength. In fact, muscular strength in the older subjects improved by 50% in 26 weeks.2

For years personal trainers and fitness professionals have touted the benefits of resistance training. Now trainers can share with their clients that it may not be as easy as sipping from a fountain, but there is one sure way to reverse the aging process-- get into the weight room!

References

1. Kravitz, Len .2009. IDEA Fitness Journal. 21-23.
2. Melov, S. 2007. Resistance Exercise Reverses Aging In Human Skeletal Muscle. Plos ONE, 2 journal.pone.com .

[Ed. Note: Melissa Hawthorne, RN, BSN, CSCS is the owner of Priority Fitness Personal Training and Wellness. She is a Master Trainer for the Resist-a-ball Company, ISCA Personal Training, Kick-boxing, and Beamfit. Melissa serves as a fitness consultant for the LaValle Metabolic Institute. ....]"

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You can also help your body with antioxidants from supplements and food.

Fruit and vegetables – particularly organic and brightly colored ones such as sweet potatoes dark green, nonstarchy vegetables, and berries -- and vitamins A, C, E, the mineral selenium, and the supplement alpha lipoic acid all give you additional antioxidant protection. So does coffee, tea, cocoa, dark chocolate, and plant based spices such as basil and many other spices.
I’ve also read that vitamin C helps prevent aging directly by keeping your “telomeres” from unraveling & it helps prevent high inflammation and the diseases that causes, about which see our next post this Thursday.

In addition, you can improve the function of your mitochondria by taking CoQ10 100 mg twice a day in addition to the improvement you get from exercising.

And, though it may work best for your heart according to studies I’ve read of instead of all of you as once thought, you can also slow aging by taking resveratrol.

Alpha Lipoic Acid for Better Health....

Today's post: Friday, 8-15-2008

I had heard that the supplement alpha lipoic acid had the very desirable double effect of both being a good antioxidant & the ability to improve the antioxidant effect of both the water soluble antioxidant vitamin C and improve the antioxidant effect of the fat soluble vitamin E.

But I still had not started taking it.

Then my doctor to his everlasting credit let me know my fasting blood sugar was too high to be desirable or entirely safe at 115. (If you do not lower such readings you get some health damage & may have the level go up more which puts you into type II diabetes. For good health your fasting glucose should be 89 or less.)

I immediately cut my sugar intake to less than half of what it had been. And, since I had also read that 200 mg a day or more of alpha lipoic acid tended to lower high blood sugar & protect you against its damaging health effects, I also immediately began taking 200 mg a day of alpha lipoic acid.

Since I did that & was already getting both regular interval cardio & strength training exercise that I continued to do, my fasting glucose went down to 87.

So, I’ve continued taking the 200 mg a day of alpha lipoic acid.

But, it seems I’ve done my health much more good by taking this much alpha lipoic acid than I had realized then.

The Total Health Breakthroughs email today lists some of the astonishing additional benefits of taking alpha lipoic acid.

So, I decided to post it here.

And, just below it I add some other information I got in my email earlier this week that lists even more benefits of taking alpha lipoic acid.

"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"

"Friday, August 15, 2008

The Alpha-Lipoic Acid Miracle

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

What if I told you there was a supplement available that could help control blood sugar, protect the liver and the brain, and just might turn out to be one of your most powerful weapons in the fight against unhealthy aging?

Meet alpha-lipoic acid.

First discovered about 50 years ago, alpha-lipoic acid (ALA) is one of the most potent antioxidants in the human body, where it's normally synthesized in small amounts. In fact, Lester Packer, PhD, a senior researcher at the University of California for over 40 years has called it, "probably the most potent naturally occurring antioxidant known to man".

Antioxidants -- as readers of THB know -- are substances that help protect cells and DNA from the damage done by rogue molecules called "free radicals". This harm -- called oxidative damage -- has been implicated in virtually every degenerative disease from cancer to Alzheimer's.

Oxidative damage is almost certainly one of the processes that ages us on a cellular level. Antioxidants fight this damage and are therefore potent weapons against disease and aging.

Other antioxidants like vitamin C are water soluble while still others like vitamin E are fat soluble. But ALA isn't just any ordinary antioxidant -- it can go anywhere, acting as an antioxidant in both fat and water as well as in intracellular and extracellular environments.

Best of all, it's a virtual antioxidant wrangler. When antioxidants have scavenged free radicals, they basically become useless, having used up their ammunition in the fight against oxidative damage.

ALA on the other hand, serves as a kind of "rest and recuperation" station for these exhausted sentries, refueling and rearming them for battle. It literally regenerates vitamin C, vitamin E and Coenzyme Q10 -- turbo charging their antioxidant power while providing additional antioxidant firepower of its own.

ALA also regenerates glutathione, another of the body's most important antioxidants, and one which is very difficult to absorb from supplements or food. According to neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, MD,1 studies have shown that the lower a person's glutathione levels, the greater their risk of cancer. We need all the glutathione we can get, and ALA helps the body create more of it.

Possibly because it is such a powerful antioxidant, its actions are particularly important for regions of the body that are highly susceptible to oxidative damage, like the brain. Rats fed an ALA supplemented diet showed significant reversals in signs of aging compared to a non-supplemented group -- and the reversal was seen in as little as two weeks.2

And it's probably not an accident that ALA is showing up as a key ingredient in some of the best skin care formulas, where it's said to help repair some of the oxidative damage of the sun. According to Burt Berkson, MD, PhD, author of The Alpha Lipoic Acid Breakthrough, ALA protects collagen in the skin from cross-linking, thus preventing wrinkling and ultimately the appearance of an aging of the body.3

ALA is a go-to supplement for diabetics or people with blood sugar issues. It appears to enhance insulin signaling, helping to bind it to its receptors and increasing the ability of the cells to take in glucose -- possibly lowering insulin resistance (the signature feature of Metabolic Syndrome).

This action makes ALA a great tool for managing blood sugar. It's hardly coincidental that in Germany, ALA is an approved drug for diabetic neuropathy, the painful degeneration of nerves in the arms and legs.

It's also remarkable for liver function. Berkson3 has long been a champion of using ALA as part of a treatment protocol for hepatitis C. He has seen people recover from severe mushroom poisoning of the liver with a treatment plan that included intravenous ALA.

"I believe ALA deficiency is at the root of many common yet serious health problems", says Berkson. "It works on the cellular level to produce energy".

But as we age, we synthesize less and less of this important molecule. If you are over 40 you can never obtain ideal amounts of ALA from food alone. "You'd have to eat about 100 pounds of spinach just to get enough of the stuff to fill a 100 mg capsule" says Berkson. Clearly, supplements are the obvious choice.

How much? If you're over 40, 100 mg should do for a basic protective dose, though some experts recommend anywhere from 100-300 mg. If you're diabetic, have blood sugar problems or liver disease, a dose of anywhere from 300-1200 mg is in order.

Because the structure of lipoic acid is similar to that of the B vitamin, biotin, they both may compete for transport across cell membranes. It's unknown whether taking ALA requires extra biotin, but many of the best formulas include some biotin just in case. Since biotin has beneficial effects on blood sugar, this is a good thing, especially for people with blood sugar issues.

References

1. Blaylock, R, Health and Nutrition Secrets that can Save your Life, Health Press, 2006.
2. Hagen, TM et al. FASEB J. 1999; 13:41-418.
3. Berkson, B The Alpha Lipoic Acid Breakthrough, Three Rivers Press, 1998.

[Ed. note: Dr. Bowden is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition and health. He's a board certified nutrition specialist with a Master's degree in psychology and the author of five books including The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. His latest book is The Most Effective Cures on Earth....]"

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And, earlier this week in another health information email I get I was reminded that
researchers have found that taking acetyl l-carnitine & alpha lipoic acid together has been shown to improve energy levels and cognitive ability enough to make older people perform almost like they did when they were younger. Dr Bruce Ames had popularized this finding in an article published in Reader’s Digest quite a while ago.

According to this more recent article it seems that taking these 2 supplements together has this effect by rejuvenating the mitochondria that provide the energy inside all your cells.

It’s pretty basic, if ALL of your cells begin to generate more energy, you feel more energetic and all your body’s functions that depend on energy.

This is very similar to how taking C0Q10 give you more energy. This also helps keep your mitochondria healthy.

So, the bottom line is that you will be less likely to get type II diabetes (& the heart disease & blood vessel damage that causes); less likely to get cancer; less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease or have your mental ability drop off; & have more energy if you take alpha lipoic acid.

And, also taking acetyl l-carnitine or taking CoQ10 increases this effect.

Exercise prevents & even reverses aging….

Today's post: Tuesday, 9-18-2007

Exercise improves your circulation; helps prevent diseases like type II diabetes & cardiovascular disease that make circulation worse; & releases extra growth hormones including testosterone.

So, if you exercise every week, every part of you functions better; & your body keeps itself in better repair than if you don’t.

In this way, exercise helps prevent aging.

Recent research has found this process works so well, exercise even reverses aging in your muscles. And, other recent research found that exercise triggers the growth of new neurons in your nervous system & brain.

I was reminded of this by an article in today’s Early to Rise by Jon Benson.

It’s well enough done, I include it here.:

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/.

“The Unbelievable Anti-Aging Properties of Resistance Exercise By Jon Benson

Of all the studies I have read, this one from the Buck Institute for Age Research seals the deal. The study headline reads: Resistance Exercise Reverses Aging in Human Skeletal Muscle.

Not "slows" or "repairs." Reverses.

As we age, our muscles begin to show what researchers call "mitochondrial dysfunction." (The mitochondria is the energy factory of the human cell.) This is what causes all the bad stuff associated with "sarcopenia," the gradual wasting away of muscle due to age and under-use that most people experience.

The problem? The less muscle you have, the more body fat you will gain - even if you don't eat any more food. Muscle loss is also related to the onset of bone diseases, including osteoporosis and even various forms of arthritis. The muscles that hold the spine in alignment can deteriorate as we age and cause major back problems. The same is true for the muscles and tendons around the knee and hip joints.

Resistance exercise - training with weights or by using your body weight - builds muscle. And it does so at any age. But the real find of the Buck Institute study is that after just six months of resistance training, test subjects (all of them 65 or older) showed a "reversal of most of the genes affected by age" in muscle tissue.

After the subjects engaged in resistance training (in this case, simple weight training), their strength increased by over 20 percent. And their genes literally "reverted back" to the same markers as "younger" genes after only six months of exercise.

Maintaining muscle as we age is good. Gaining muscle is even better. But literally reverting our genes to a "younger version" within the muscle - after only six months - is mind boggling.

Add resistance training to your exercise regimen. You'll look better and feel better than you ever have.

[Ed. Note: Jon Benson, a lifecoach and nutrition counselor who specializes in helping individuals discover a life-altering mind/body connection, offers practical advice for becoming stronger, healthier, and more energetic in the articles he writes for ETR's FREE natural health e-letter. His work in the field of post-40 fitness and mental empowerment has helped countless thousands. Learn how you can do the same at http://www.fitover40.com/ or http://www.mpowerfitness.com/.]”
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Our added comments.:

Similar research has shown that regular exercise triggers the growth of new neurons in your brain & nervous system.

This effect when combined with the better circulation exercise causes & the things exercise does to help prevent your circulation from getting worse means that exercise helps prevent & can help reverse age related or vascular mental decline.

And, there is reason to believe this effect also helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

(Since Friday, 9-21 this week is a national day to focus on Alzheimer’s disease as an issue, our post will be the long list of other things you can do to prevent Alzheimer’s disease & age related or vascular mental decline.

Some of these methods will surprise you. But they all work.)

The other notable point Jon makes is that:

“As we age, our muscles begin to show what researchers call "mitochondrial dysfunction." (The mitochondria is the energy factory of the human cell.) This is what causes all the bad stuff associated with "sarcopenia," the gradual wasting away of muscle due to age and under-use that most people experience.”

Guess what? There is another method to prevent or reverse this "mitochondrial dysfunction." AND prevent having it get worse.

One of the other causes of "mitochondrial dysfunction." is that one of the ways our bodies power our mitochondria is by using CoQ10. As people age their blood levels of CoQ10 decrease -- apparently because our bodies become less able to make it well from the nutrients we consume.

But you can now supplement with CoQ10. Depending on your age & other factors you may increase the level of functioning of your mitochondria quite a bit by taking 100 mg a day of CoQ10 each morning or by doing that & also taking a second 100 mg each day about mid-day. If you are over 40, try out 100 mg a day. Or if you are over 50 or have high blood pressure or any heart disease, try 200 mg a day.

And, taking CoQ10 has other benefits besides reinvigorating all your mitochondria. In people with high blood pressure it has lowered their numbers by 16 & 9 or 15 & 10 in various studies. That’s as good or better than taking drugs that reduce high blood pressure often do.

CoQ10 also strengthens your heart. Unfortunately, despite their proven benefits, statin drugs LOWER CoQ10. So, if you take statin drugs it will pay you to take 200 mg a day of CoQ10. Mercifully, many doctors now know this. But if your doctor doesn’t, it’s still wise to take CoQ10. You’ll feel better & your heart will benefit.

In summary, if you’d like to remain more youthful, slow aging, stay mentally competent & remain in good health, exercise regularly each week; be sure to include strength training; & take CoQ10.

Boost your growth hormone naturally & prevent aging ….

Today's post: Monday, 7-23-2007

Taking HGH or human growth hormone may work for some people to help stay young or to restore them to the capacities they had when they were younger.

But doing so is expensive & apparently tends to increase the rate of growth of any cancers a person might have & may have other side effects. Worse, the less expensive supplements sold as HGH may not be effective or have enough of it to work.

BUT, there IS a way to get strong growth hormone release that’s proven to grow new brain cells, restore youthful strength, & more. If done carefully it tends to have none of these side effects either. And, one of the growth hormones released is testosterone. So using it also helps restore youthful libido.

Here’s an article I got last week from my Early to Rise email.:

I’ve known the information for quite a bit. But he states it so well, it inspired this post.

“Get an Anti-Aging Boost From Strength Training

By Craig Ballantyne

Every day, I receive spam e-mails from marketers trying to sell me "Human Growth Hormone" boosters to help prevent aging. HGH does have anti-aging properties, but you don't need to buy anything to increase your own levels of it. There's a natural way to do so.

It's called strength training.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina found that when they compared the amount of growth hormone released as a result of a 30-minute aerobic exercise session or strength training, significantly more was released with the strength-training workout. So if you are looking for a way to fight aging naturally (and increase fat burning while you're at it), don't neglect strength training as part of your exercise program.

The best strength-training exercises to use are multiple-muscle and total-body exercises, such as step-ups, lunges, and squats. You can do these with your bodyweight only, or while holding dumbbells in both hands.”

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/.

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It also works to do several exercises each of which works a different muscle. Exercises like push ups, parallel bar dips, & squats are important to include as they work your larger muscles. But dumbbell curls, rows, & presses and leg exercises like calf raises that work smaller muscles also help.

One way to do many different exercises in each workout is to do a single set of each exercise.

Doing one set of each exercise is the simplest & easiest to keep doing. Even better, research shows one set is effective if you use enough weight to be challenging to do by the end of each set. Unless you are very experienced or working with a good personal trainer who is working with you to achieve a specific goal, you’ll likely get the best results with doing just one set.

(Sometimes when you begin to get strong enough, you may find it wise to do an easy warm up set of 7 with a weight you can do easily; then do one of 10 with a weight you can lift with perfect form until about 10 repetitions: & then do a set with a weight you can do about 6 times before it gets challenging using good & controlled but not quite perfect form.

I recommend only doing that for one or two exercises where you are focusing on making progress. And, just do the middle set of up to 10 for everything else.)

The critical thing is to do 6 to 10 repetitions in each exercise; & to add a small amount of weight when you can do 10 easily. That way you keep making progress & maximize the release of growth hormone.