Introducing Physical Exercise and Fitness
Physical exercise helps your to achieve wellness. It is part of healthy living. Anybody interested in natural health should regularly participate in moderate forms of physical exercise, like fitness walking. An active lifestyle is even better than physical exercise in improving your natural health and fitness.
Highlights of Physical Exercise and Fitness
- Physical exercise strengthens your body and makes it more fit and resilient.
- Exercise and physical activity impact upon your wellness and fitness.[2]
- Exercise has a suppressive effect upon cancer.
- Physical exercise is an imperative for the older adult.
- Use it or lose it!
- Rule of Aging: The physical and mental functions that we keep using thrive, while those we fail to use regularly diminish.
- Use it or lose it!
- The biggest impact on your wellness and level of fitness will come from aerobic exercise.
- The benefits of anaerobic exercise will be very important in your eighties,
nineties, and beyond.
- Prevention of sarcopenia (the loss of lean body mass)[3]
- Physical exercise is a biological factor of the mind
- body connection.
- Biological factors affect both your body and mind.
| "Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness." --Joseph
Pilates Return to Life Through Contrology, 1945 |
Overview of Introducing Physical Exercise, Natural Health and Fitness
INTRODUCTION - Since the beginning of time, survival has been a daily struggle. Simply staying alive was physically demanding. Yet, humans in industrialized societies over the last 150 years have become spoiled. We live in our minds so much of the time that we have almost forgotten that we have a body. Many people work in offices who make their living by reading, writing, speaking, and thinking, but seldom by physical labor.
Regular physical exercise does the body good.[3],[4] Physical exercise empowers natural health advocates to take active measures to combat disuse atrophy.[2] If you have a natural health attitude taking the car to cross the road is out, and a workout in the gym three or four times a week is in.
Physical exercise is a biological factor of the mind - body connection.
Our bodies demand to be used. Failure to use them results in your muscles deteriorating, at a steady and progressive rate. Thus, everyone should develop good, sensible habits of exercise that they can stick to for the rest of their lives.[4] You should pay attention to four different kinds of exercise: an active lifestyle, aerobic, anaerobic, and functional exercises.[1],[2],[3],[4]
Exercise, or movement, has a suppressive effect upon cancer.
The objective of exercise is to improve your physical fitness. Thus, if what you are doing does not improve either your cardiovascular fitness or your muscular strength, then it should not be considered as physical exercise.
AN ACTIVE LIFESTYLE
Historically, except for the last 150 years, the demands of daily life gave everybody all the physical exercise that they really needed to get. People used to walk constantly, and lift and carry burdens. They used to walk to gather food, to work, to the market, and they walked to do virtually everything.
Instead of dreaming up ways to work as little as possible, why NOT find ways to make many of your ordinary activities more vigorous? Since man was meant to walk, the easiest way to increase your overall physical fitness is to choose to walk at every opportunity possible. Walking is an ideal form of physical exercise that physically fit individuals can routinely participate in.[4],[5],[6] Walking, also, provides for direct contact with the elements of nature. Walking tones muscles, improves your fitness, circulation, appetite, and breathing. Furthermore, walking, unlike bicycling or swimming, is a load-bearing exercise.[4] Walking, also, calms and clears the mind and helps reduce stress and tension. Walking helps to keep your mind centered.
| On Fitness: "It's a way of life." -- Jack LaLanne |
Always do something physical every day, for at least 30 minutes.[3] Choose to walk instead of driving short distances. Choose to take the stairs instead of using the elevator. Try doing yard work, working on your car, and cleaning your house. Participating regularly in some type of physical recreation is even better.
| "You don't get old from calendar years. You get old from quitting doing things." -- Jack LaLanne |
An active lifestyle is always better than exercise in improving your personal health and fitness.
AEROBIC EXERCISE
Aerobic activity is long in duration, but low in intensity. Aerobic exercise elevates the heart rate and breathing for a sustained period. Aerobic activity improves the efficiency of your heart and lungs, helps control weight, and increases muscle and joint flexibility. Aerobic exercise will improve your health and fitness.
ANAEROBIC EXERCISE
There is more to physical exercise than just cardiovascular fitness. Muscle strength is an equally important component to overall natural health and fitness. Anaerobic exercise is short in duration, and places emphasize upon building muscle, rather than burning oxygen.
| "You can eat perfectly but if you don't exercise,
you cannot get by. There are so many health food nuts out there that
eat nothing but natural foods but they don't exercise and they look
terrible. Then there are other people who exercise like a son-of-a-gun
but eat a lot of junk. They look pretty good because the exercise is
king. Nutrition is queen. Put them together and you've got a kingdom!" -- Jack LaLanne |
FUNCTIONAL EXERCISE
Functional exercise is the latest exercise lingo that can be used to explain the recent exercise fads of the wellness movement, as well as the free weights vs. machine controversy in the bodybuilding community.
In conclusion: from the Natural Health Perspective natural health is about promoting wellness and fitness through the natural therapies of eating a healthy diet, taking nutritional supplements, reaping the benefits of exercise, and having a healthy attitude and resilience in your life.
The Natural Health Perspective site must caution the public against starting any exercise program at a high-intensity level. People new to exercise should always start at the beginning with a low-level of exercise intensity and then gradually build up to a higher level of intensity during their workouts. People new to exercise usually can safely start out by walking. The idea is that you body has to be given enough time to adjust to exercising. Given enough time, most people can safely build up to an high-exercise intensity level.
While eating healthy whole food is the foundation of Natural Health, only exercise develops and maintains fitness. Do not forget that physical exercise is only one part of the Natural Health Perspective. Exercise and diet are moderately difficult to carry out and offer mid-level rewards.
Please read our Exercise Disclaimer.
References:
- "A balance of resistance training and aerobic training is recommended
for decreasing morbidity and mortality."
Winett RA, Carpinelli RN. Examining the validity of exercise guidelines for the prevention of morbidity and all-cause mortality. Ann Behav Med. 2000 Summer;22(3):237-45. Review. PMID: 11126469 - "CONCLUSIONS--These data demonstrate a graded inverse relationship
between total physical activity and mortality. Furthermore, vigorous activities
but not nonvigorous activities were associated with longevity. These findings
pertain only to all-cause mortality; nonvigorous exercise has been shown
to benefit other aspects of health."
Lee IM, Hsieh CC, Paffenbarger RS Jr. Exercise intensity and longevity in men. The Harvard Alumni Health Study. JAMA. 1995 Apr 19;273(15):1179-84. PMID: 7707624 - "There are many benefits to maintaining an active lifestyle as women
age. These benefits include maintenance of bone mineral density and prevention
of osteoporosis, decreased susceptibility to falls, and decreased susceptibility
to breast cancer and other chronic diseases. There are great psychologic
benefits to maintaining an active lifestyle, and the connection between cardiovascular
fitness and lowering the incidence of cardiac disease is well established.
... The Centers for Disease Control recommends at least 30 minutes of moderately
intensive activity on most days of the week. In older women, the loss of
lean body mass (sarcopenia) can be diminished through a strength training
program."
Curl WW. Aging and exercise: are they compatible in women? Clin Orthop. 2000 Mar;(372):151-8. Review. PMID: 10738424 - "Regular physical exercise is useful at all ages. In the elderly,
even a gentle exercise program consisting of walking, bicycling, playing
golf if performed constantly increases longevity by preventing the onset
of the main diseases or alleviating the handicaps they may have caused. Cardiovascular
diseases, which represent the main cause of death in the elderly, and osteoporosis,
a disabling disease potentially capable of shortening life expectancy, benefit
from physical exercise which if performed regularly well before the start
of old age may help to prevent them."
Pentimone F, Del Corso L. [Why regular physical activity favors longevity]. Minerva Med. 1998 Jun;89(6):197-201. PMID: 9739351 - "Exercise reported as walking, stair climbing, and sports play related
inversely to total mortality, primarily to death due to cardiovascular or
respiratory causes. Death rates declined steadily as energy expended on such
activity increased from less than 500 to 3500 kcal per week, beyond which
rates increased slightly. Rates were one quarter to one third lower among
alumni expending 2000 or more kcal during exercise per week than among less
active men."
Paffenbarger RS Jr, Hyde RT, Wing AL, Physical activity, all-cause mortality, and longevity of college alumni. N Engl J Med. 1986 Mar 6;314(10):605-13. PMID: 3945246 - "Based on reported frequency and duration of walking, weekly energy
expenditure in exercise walking was estimated to be 1127 +/- 783 kcal.wk-1.
These data suggest that the self-selected exercise intensity of healthy,
habitual exercise walkers meets the American College Sports Medicine's recommendation
for improvement of cardiorespiratory fitness. These data further suggest
that, in this population, the average weekly energy expended through walking
reaches a level associated with improvements in health and longevity."
Spelman CC, Pate RR, Macera CA, Self-selected exercise intensity of habitual walkers. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1993 Oct;25(10):1174-9. PMID: 8231763
