Exercise for Life and your Family

When you sleep your body was designed to be almost continually active. It tosses and turns throughout the night while you sleep for very good reasons. Immobilize a limb for just a mere three hours and it starts to degenerate.  Even during sleep your body will automatically stretch and flex and turn more then a hundred or so times a night. It’s amazing to me that people in America become more and more sedentary trying to figure out the simplest way to answer the phone without moving a muscle and wondering why it hurts so much to do basic things such as walking or playing with the kids.  I could lie and say none of it is your fault but, of course, that would be a lie. So I will stick with the truth. Disuse is deadly. The fact is, the more you lead a sedentary life style the more damage you cause to your body! How do I know this? In a paper published way back in 1982, Dr. Walter Bortz from the Department of Medicine Clinic in the Journal of the American Medical Association reviewed 100 studies showing that sedentary lifestyles cause widespread bodily damage.¹ This damage occurred independently of other health risk factors such as smoking, alcohol, fat, age and family history of diseases. This study included some very amazing finding about individuals leading an inactive life style.

So what does a sedentary life style help cause? First, it reduces vital capacity.² In laymen’s terms this means sitting like a slug reduces your body’s ability to take up and use oxygen. So muscles, organs, and the brain become partially oxygen deprived. Secondly, inactivity reduces cardiac output, that is, the ability of your heart to pump blood around the body. So the tissues of couch potatoes become doubly deprived. They get less oxygen and less blood and the essential nutrients blood contains.

The fascinating thing is the body, in an effort to make up these deficits, constricts arteries, thereby raising blood pressure. This arterial constriction on top of a weakened heart not only increases things like blood clots and stroke, but it also makes your cardiovascular system less capable to respond to sudden movements or changes of position. Consequently that’s why sedentary people often get dizzy when standing up.  The restricted system of blood flow cannot respond efficiently.

Inactivity also helps increase levels of cholesterol and triglycerides. Triglycerides are fats you store. Inactivity continually shrinks the amount of muscle on your body which is the very thing you need to keep the fat off or get rid of those ever developing love handles. As muscles disappear and fat replaces it, over the years simple things like chasing the kids or walking up a flight of stairs is impossible without feeling like you need to call 911.

Bones become weak and thin because your skeleton requires resistance exercise to grow new bone matrix. A combination of inactivity and proper nutrition is a major cause of the current epidemic of osteoporosis today. Sex hormone levels also decline with inactivity which is now linked to the current increase in impotence in America. This number has tripled since the 1940s. Don’t take my word for it.  The studies exist for everybody to see.

I could go on and on with study after study showing how inactivity is responsible for most major problems people are encountering today, but that would be a book in itself.

The plain truth is exercise can save your life! A good exercise program helps strengthen heart and lungs by increasing vital capacity, protects blood pressure, aids in lower cholesterol, strengthens bones, helps protect glucose tolerance against the degenerative changes in insulin metabolism that leads to diabetes, and best of all for most, keeps the FAT off.   Exercise to the body is like an oil change to an automobile. If you change your oil every 3000 mile that car has a very good chance of clearing 200,000 miles easy. But take that car for granted and don’t change your oil and there’s a good chance that car will seize within 2 years.  The body is the same way with one difference:  You can’t go buy replacement parts at your local store. Well, you can to some degree, but be prepared to be bedridden or confined to a motorized chair for your remaining years.

Most people say they “Don’t have time to exercise” or “My family is more important”. I respond “if you are not around then who is going to take care of the family?!”  Give yourself and your family one of the biggest gift you can ever give…exercise. It won’t prevent everything but it will sure give you a good chance to have a long and fruitful life. Until next time happy training.