Reader Robert Davis sent a well-written summary in last Thursday's Healthy Aging Starts Now. Here he adds about our view of aging, and improving physical skills as years pass rather than letting them slip away from lack of use:
"I forgot to mention to that this stuff has helped my instrument playing as well! Sitting straight up and relaxed makes execution of difficult passages so much easier. I used to unconsciously tense up sometimes and it made it harder for no reason. Things just seem so much easier relaxed =P
"I think aging in America is a plague the way it is viewed. I dunno if I made a good point or not (Thursday's Part I) but it seems to me that aging has a warped sense of reality to it in our country. Easy example is I was watching a clip from a dancer (pop dancer) who was in her 40s. Someone made an off the wall comment - "Well she does really good for being 45." But what does her age have to do with it.
"I just realized lately that you see this "plague" of thought that seems to be culturally conditioned that says by a certain age we should be degraded and unable to "do" things. This is how people think and it seems this is how the medical fields think. All I can think of when I see this plague is people in other countries going up and down mountains in flip flops or bare feet at all ages. Activities that would really poop out an average American, they do with ease.
"I get frustrated that we as a nation have the mentality that we must decline when you have shown me this is not true. I used to believe it, but when you turn your head slightly and see it from a better angle, it is not true. It is our lifestyle and habits that degrade. Not our age:) Change the habits, like you say and say over and over again. Why can't people see this?
"Ok I am all worked up lol.. This is why I have considered trying a different field more like yours! I am still considering it."
Mr. Davis has been making great gains in his weight lifting and healthy life using my work after first writing last year to learn how to fix a back injury from lifting. He previously sent in photos practicing various retraining drills by propping his cell phone set on timer against a paper clip and other impromptu devices. I asked if he had update photos of his progress. He replied that, "the phone that had the camera had decided to test gravity and never came out of it :( "
With his can-do ways, I think he will be sending more of his success stories. Click the label 'readers inspiring story' for many readers' stories of using my work to fix injuries and get their life back.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Robert Davis, frequent Fitness Fixer success story contributor, wrote to me with observations that will encourage, educate, and help many -
"I am beginning to see an almost "plague" in our society. That plague is auto-assumption that age automatically will start to equal degradation of your body."
Mr. Davis, a young lifter, had first left a comment to a Fitness Fixer article last year asking about fixing his back injury from weight lifting. His success stories came in frequently from there, telling how he gained better health and ability than before his injury. In a recent update letter to me, he sent these insights:
" I have not mailed in a few months. However I did not want to forget what got me back to what I love. I have had no issues with my back for months now. It went from dreadful to move, to better then ever.
" It is all so simple once it becomes ingrained. At first it does seem to be a chore learning to (bend right with a lunge and) squat and all the other things to correct bad habits. However these things, with conscious repetition, become habits. No longer do I have to think about healthy movement!
" This has been beneficial not only for my back, but for all areas that were troublesome. The more I loosed up, bent correctly, and used movement correctly, the more minor problems just seem to fade away!
" I have a new mantra when I workout with weight. It is called "on the muscle" chant. Every exercise I perform I say this in my mind and concentrate all weight on the muscles (instead of making it easier by shifting weight to joints). If I feel it is too heavy and I am doing some joint crushing, I back off the weight. I do not lose anything backing off. I gain something. More strength to do the same "on the muscle". In sum, I have really really chosen healthy movement over getting in an extra few pounds with "joint/arch or whatever" assistance. It is not worth it. You will get it eventually "on the muscle!"
" One sad thing I am noticing though lately after going thru stuff myself is this. I am beginning to see an almost "plague" in our society. That plague is auto assumption that age automatically will start to equal degradation of your body. I grew up as a pre-teen/teen in the late 80s and into the 90s. I never remembered regarding people who were much older as limited. I think this phenomenon is a cultural condition based on no facts, and the massive influx of pharmaceuticals. I could be wrong but that is what I see.
" I am amazed at all the people I run across in the gym who are told to "not do this or that". I often think of my grandfather and the time period he grew up in. He was very active and working under cars and whatnot till a few months before he passed away. No one told him his age would hamper that.
" I could go on and on about this but I think particularly in America, we are in a self created plague where age is a bad thing and something to postpone. What little do people know is that healthy movement, awareness, and lifestyle help one get thru all this without having to stop what they love.
" Look at me. From a debilitating back injury to returning to what I love to do - "lift weights in the gym." I was skeptical I would have ever made it back when I got hurt. However I am kinda glad now I did get hurt as sometimes there is a gem inside what otherwise would seem problematic. That Gem was learning (from you) how to do what I love to do without worry of age or injury ever detouring me from that. I am in my mid 30s now and plan to stay on top of myself with your methods for as long as I have a passion for this(and I feel that is a very long time). After all I see the body builders in the 70s and am truly inspired to keep going.
" Thank you! I also wanted to just check in and give a little insight of what I was doing and my thoughts on things =P "Robert Davis"
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
Three years ago, Merlene's closest friend died. Merlene, who is 74, lost all motivation. Because she was not exercising, she gained a lot of weight. This is where Ivy came in...
Ivy from New Zealand, frequent success story contributor, wrote me in August about her neighbor Merlene:
"You will be pleased that I have a new lady under my wing so to speak. I lent her your book "How To Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs Or Surgery." Along with giving her advice she tells me that it has changed her life which pleases me."
I wrote to Ivy to ask her if Merlene would be comfortable telling us more on what she did, so others could try it too. Ivy replied:
"I encouraged her to walk again. At first it was difficult, she had difficulty breathing. I noted that she was walking flat footed and taught her to lift her toes. She complained of back pain - I showed her how to lie on her stomach and lift herself up on her elbows before getting out of bed in the mornings. She has now learnt to put her spine into the neutral position. Re her breathing, I showed her how to breathe deeply. She told me that she rolled her neck every day in a circle - she now does the trapezius stretch plus pectoral stretch instead.
"Instead of bad bending, she does squats and lunges while making the bed, doing the vacuum cleaning, going to the fridge and the like, plus gardening.
I checked in with Ivy a while later to make sure all was still improving, and gave her questions to ask Merlene so I could make sure all was well. Ivy wrote again:
"Today I visited Merlene and asked her some questions. She is stronger, breathing has improved, she is more flexible, can walk further, the back pain has improved immensely. She hasn't weighed herself yet, however, is hoping that there will be a weight loss when she weighs herself next week.
"She finds your books "How to Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery" and your Stretching Smarter book very helpful so I left them with her so that she can refer to them.
"She also tells me that your books along with my help and advice has changed her life for the better. She has lost that negativity and feeling positive about life again.
"Merlene is a very quiet, private lady so I try to treat her in a gentle way. She comes from another country and I gather that life has been very hard. She is so enjoying what she is doing. Most important is the fact that she trusts me plus she is very happy you are doing this article.
"Merlene is happy for you to use her name. Re the photo and title (of the article) she would rather it was your choice. "Hugs Ivy "
How to Fix Your Own Pain Without Drugs or Surgery and Stretching SmarterStretching Healthier, and others, on www.DrBookspan.com/books.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy.
In the hot days of summer, common warnings involve avoiding the heat. What about the advantages of heat? Hot environments can improve your health in several ways.
Done right:
Exercising in the heat improves your fitness level and ability to exercise.
Exercising in the heat increases your tolerance to heat, making life more comfortable in the heat.
Exercising in the heat prevents the decreases in heat tolerance that otherwise occur with increased age, which can be unhealthy, even dangerous.
Exercising in the heat makes positive changes in your body that improve your fitness. You increase blood volume, improve cooling ability, make changes in sweating, increase the vasculature that helps circulation, cooling and exercising at the same time, increase specific chemical compounds in the body that improve health and ability to exercise.
When you exercise and increase body temperature, your body produces more of an interesting compound called heat shock protein. Heat shock proteins are families of proteins that do several things including preventing other proteins from damage by infection, ultraviolet light, starvation, heat, cold, and other harsh conditions. Heat shock proteins are thought to mobilize immune function against infections and diseases, even cancer.
Improved ability to tolerate heat without discomfort, called heat adaptation, occurs fairly quickly - with large improvements within the first week of exerting in the heat. Exercising in heat is more effective to produce heat acclimatization than heat exposure without exercise. Aerobic fitness is a major factor in heat tolerance.
It is a myth that you must avoid sweating to stay healthy. Exercising enough to sweat makes you more flexible, increases many chemical reactions in your body that are healthy. Sweat itself has compounds beneficial for your skin and body. Don't worry that you must exercise only indoors in air-conditioning in order to do healthful exercise. A protective environment does prevent initial discomfort, but reduces benefits and the ability to be comfortable in the heat.
This all does not mean to go out and cause yourself heat injury by overdoing without thinking. It is to gain the many benefits of exercising safely in the heat
I will cover more physical changes from exercise in the heat that improve health and exercise level in future articles.
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Fast Fitness - Better Standing Hamstring, Achilles, and Inside Leg Stretch
Friday, June 12, 2009
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Fast Friday Fitness - get a better stretch for the hamstring of the standing leg when stretching the other leg to the side:
When you stand with one leg stretching to the side, notice the leg you are standing on. It is common to stand with the foot turned outward and the hip rounded under you.
Instead, turn the standing leg to face directly ahead. Knee and toes straight forward. Not turned out, not even a small amount. Stand straight.
Notice the stretch move to the back of your leg.
My student Leslie is pictured above at age 68. I snapped this shot of her while she was waiting for one of my classes. The position of the foot on the standing leg isn't visible, but she is straight ahead. I had to snap the photo quickly before the club manager told us to stop.
Stand straight without leaning over, rounding your upper body, or letting your hip round under you. This is different from the way most people are used to.
The straighter you stand, the more stretch, while training the function of healthy posture - a functional stretch. You need to be able to lift one leg without being so tight that your back rounds and your hip rolls under. Think of stairs, kicks for dancing, aerobics, martial arts, stepping over things, stairs, much real life. If you are not only using bad mechanics for daily life, but training unhealthful tight mechanics with conventional bent over stretching, what are you accomplishing?
If you can't stand straight, lower your leg to where you can. There is little point stretching for health while practicing unhealthful ways.
What has happened in a year? She can now do 40 push-ups. We just don't have a video camera. While we get one, click the link to do your push-ups with her each morning while it is still only 30.
Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking more, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, or in the Fitness Fixer Index.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. Get certified - DrBookspan.com/Academy.
A video should appear below of 91-year-old drummer Jerry. Chick the arrow in the center of the movie box or at bottom left of the video box to watch her. You do not need HD to watch it. It is viewable at various resolutions.
Stay active, keep moving, be happy. It keeps you vital, more with each year.
For more ideas click the labels "aging" and "spirit" under this post. Labels give all Fitness Fixer posts about that topic. The label "video-movie" shows all Fitness Fixer posts containing a video to watch and enjoy learning how to be happy and fit.
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Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. Before asking, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, and archives at right.
Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right.
Grace didn't have a lifetime of track and field experience. She lived a life of real movement, called functional exercise, raising 11 children and doing chores. She decided to run a race. One month later, she ran the race and broke a world record.
A video should appear below of Grace Foster. Click the small, right-pointing arrow at bottom-left of the video box to watch her straight body positioning, the race, and her happy family.
Grace exercises daily, stretches, eats healthful food. Other racing record holders over age 90 will be featured in future articles.
Get moving, stay moving, be happy. It keeps you vital, more with each year.
Click the labels, aging, running, and spirit under this post. Labels give all Fitness Fixer posts about that topic. The label video-movie shows all Fitness Fixer posts containing a video to watch and enjoy learning how to be happy and fit.
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Read success stories of these methods and send your own. Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. Before asking, see if your answers are already here by clicking labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. SeeDr. Bookspan's books.
The target Feb 17th date for changing to digital television signal in the U.S. has moved to June. Numerous informational broadcasts have been made to prepare the public. Would you have been ready?
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Several studies have found that sunlight helped with depression and agitation in elderly people. It is likely that younger people benefit also.
Simple adjustments, not only in lighting, but scheduling daily outdoor activity and simple walks, may ease behavioral problems associated with dementia.
Click the label sunlight for ideas.
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Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
Have The Fitness Fixer e-mailed to you, free. Click "updates via e-mail" - Health Expert Updates (trumpet icon) upper right column.
A debate in fad fitness is if you need aerobic activity to lose weight, or if weightlifting is sufficient. The larger issue is that you need to use your cardiovascular system for health.
A 21 year long study from the Stanford University School of Medicine found that older runners live longer and suffer fewer disabilities than healthy non-runners.
All 440 study participants were 50 years old or over at the beginning of the study. All ran an average of four hours a week. By the end of the study, all were in their 70s, 80s, and older, running an average of 76 minutes a week.
At the 19 year mark in the study, 34 percent of the non-runners had died, compared with 15 percent of the runners. Onset of disability was delayed in runners by an average of 16 years.
Lead study author, Dr. James Fries, is almost 70, runs 20 miles a week and plays tennis. He stated the positive numbers for runners was not even as high as compared to average populations, because "the control group was pretty darn healthy." The "health gap" between runners and non-runners increased with age. Fries said, "I always thought that the two curves would start to parallel each other and that eventually aging would overpower exercise. We can't find even a little twitch toward that gap narrowing in the present time."
Study authors also stated that, "The findings probably apply to a variety of aerobic exercises, including walking."
Study was published in the Aug. 11 2008 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Conventional medical texts originally stressed that exercise would harm elders. That viewpoint led to disastrous decades of needless infirmities among people who could have retained mobility and independence.
In 1980, Dr. Fries wrote a landmark paper of his "compression of morbidity" hypothesis, that "regular exercise would compress, or reduce, the amount of time near the end of life when a person was disabled or unable to carry out the activities of daily living, such as walking, dressing and getting out of a chair."
Stay active, keep moving whatever your age. It is the most important medicine you have.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Limited Class spaces for personal evaluation. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.See Dr. Bookspan's Books. ---
A study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found no evidence of accelerated rates of osteoarthritis among long-distance runners.
Further, weight-bearing exercise like running helps stave off osteoporosis by maintaining bone mineral density.
Study source: American Journal of Preventive Medicine August 2008; 35(2):133-8.
With good movement mechanics, running will not cause early wear on your bones and joints. With injurious poor movement habits, of course, you can wear and injure the joints.
Posts showing good movement mechanics during exercise and daily life:
Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from selected ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
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This morning, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released "The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans." The guidelines describe, "the types and amounts of physical activity that offer substantial health benefits." In summary, adults need 30 minutes of moderate-intensity daily physical activity five days a week, and children should run and play at least an hour every day.
Regular exercise lowers the risk of heart disease, many cancers, osteoporosis, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, depression, and other diseases. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said in a telephone interview, "More than 59 percent of adults don't get enough physical activity and a quarter of adults aren't active at all in their leisure time."
Guidelines for ages 6–17:
1 hour (60 minutes) or more of physical activity every day.
Most of the 1 hour or more a day should be either moderate- or vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity.
Vigorous-intensity activity on at least 3 days per week.
Muscle-strengthening and bone-strengthening activity at least 3 days per week.
Guidelines for over age 18:
2 hours and 30 minutes a week of moderate-intensity, or 1 hour and 15 minutes (75 minutes) a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity, or an equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity. Aerobic activity should be performed in episodes of at least 10 minutes, preferably spread throughout the week.
Additional health benefits are provided by increasing to 5 hours (300 minutes) a week of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity, or 2 hours and 30 minutes a week of vigorous-intensity physical activity, or an equivalent combination of both.
Muscle-strengthening activities that involve all major muscle groups performed on 2 or more days per week.
Barry A. Franklin, PhD, national American Heart Association spokesperson and Director of Cardiac Rehabilitation and Exercise Laboratories at William Beaumont Hospital in Michigan, stated, "Numerous studies now suggest that if we can simply move people out of the lowest levels of cardiorespiratory fitness, it can have a profound (and beneficial) impact on public health." More information and downloads of federal guidelines - www.health.gov/PAGuidelines.
Use this Fitness Fixer column to see how to get healthful activity as part of daily life. You don't need a gym, a trainer, or equipment. Click the articles and archives in the list at right, use the search box at top right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Read success stories of these methods and send your own.
--- Read and contribute your own success stories of these methods. Before asking questions, see if your answers are already here - click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books. For personal evaluation take a Class. Top students may apply to certify throughDrBookspan.com/Academy.
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Photo - Family meets guidelines on Morro Strand State Beach by mikebaird
Autumn Yard Work - Limiting the Person Instead of the Injury Again?
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
A Medline article on autumn yard and housework gives a list from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, which they say will reduce injuries. Their list includes doing less, lifting lighter loads, not lifting overhead, or using turning action to the side.
The Orthopaedic Surgeons' list is another case of limiting the patient to limit the pain.
It is unfortunate to instruct patients to do less physical activity. It is no mystery that restricting activity reduces strength, flexibility, and balance. When patients become tight and weak, they are next sent to physical therapy to lift weights and stretch. Instead, go outside. Get free exercise, get stronger, increase balance, have some fun instead of being held back.
It is not a mystery that if you spend an afternoon bent wrong over a rake, lifting wrong, and hunching your shoulders, you will be achy. Have fun doing yard work in the fresh air in healthy, commonsense ways:
Carry Heavy Leaf Bags - check if you lean backward to hold and carry loads. Instead of leaning, which pinches the lower spine, stand upright, use neutral spine - Prevent Back Surgery
You Don't Need Expensive Ergonomic Rakes And Tools Or Fancy Padding. The majority of the world does far heavier work with far less. Bend right (links above) instead of bending over. To prevent hand irritation and blisters, don't clench your grip and be willing to toughen your hands and skin. Being too delicate means fragile skin. The soil has many substances beneficial to health and disease reduction, some documented to reduce depression. Post on this to come. Don't be too afraid to get dirty.
Doing less is a flawed approach to preventing injury in the short term, and over the long run, will undermine your health and abilities. Use your brain for healthy, fun ways to keep doing more of your favorite activities.
"You're never too old to become younger" -Mae West
--- Questions come in by the hundreds. I make posts from fun ones. See if your answers are already here by clicking links and archives and the Fitness Fixer Index. Read success stories of these methods and send your own. For answers to personal medical questions - Replies to Medical Questions. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
Yesterday's post, Not Old for the Olympics Part I, told of athletes competing in the highest level athletic events over many years as they get older. The ability to keep physical skills by training is not new or unusual. To keep physical skills, you must continue to use and practice them.
Here is Leslie's movie again so you can practice along with her. Press the arrow to watch this short movie, approximately 30 seconds long.
Leslie can now do 40 pushups easily, and says her goal is 45 for her 68th birthday this October. I didn't have a camera with me to record her 40 pushups last week in class before posting this post, but will try when I get back from the Wilderness Medicine conference.
Leslie says she wants me to tell all of you that she could not do any pushups when she started working with me. She says it was my training in functional daily movement that made the difference, instead of doing artificial exercises in "sets and reps" for isolated body parts. She says the last 5 of the 45 pushups are hard, but she perseveres and keeps smiling, knowing discipline needs training. Bookmark her movie so you can do your 30 pushups every day with her.
When Dara Torres made the news by qualifying for the Beijing Olympics, the first comments by the masses included that performance enhancement drugs were probably needed. Torres employs a head coach, a sprint coach, a strength coach, two stretchers who moved to Florida to stretch her daily, two masseuses, a chiropractor, a nanny, and household help, with costs estimated at least $100,000 per year, plus the support of family, friends, and good sponsors. You don't win an Olympics alone, but it does not require drugs to get better over years of training. Torres trains hard, and has a team of trainers and people who stretch her, using many of the conventional moves that "work" at the price of her 13 surgeries for injuries.
There are people who state that it is unfair and unethical to use performance-enhancing drugs, but they wear or allow a one thousand dollar engineered bathing suit like the new Speedo LZR. When I was competing, swim goggles were considered an unfair advantage. Mark Spitz won his record setting medals without even wearing goggles. When I was competing, it was considered unfair for an American athlete to earn any money from athletics. No sponsors were allowed. Athletes swept floors to earn money to compete. Today they are not only sponsored and advertised, pro athletes arrive at events with chauffeurs from their villas.
Is it fair to be taller, a trait which favors speed in swimming? Some who say performance-enhancing drugs are wrong will eat engineered food, and use expensive altitude chambers and other training devices. Is it fair to other competitors when one swimmer has a rich family who gives up all to support their dreams? It is considered unfair doping to use certain steroids to hasten healing of internal injuries and soreness from intensive training, but not if you use them to heal skin erosions from the same hard training. Drugs are vilified in some sports, glorified in others, and routinely used in the business and military world for increased concentration and competitiveness, and reduction of hunger and fatigue.
Debate continues about ethics. Two truths are important to remember - Performance enhancing drugs are not necessary to win or to achieve the highest goals of competition. There are women swimmers today who without any drugs are breaking records of men swimmers of the 70's who used steroids. Performance drugs are not healthy. The purpose of athletics is not just to mindlessly best the person next to you. A higher view is the beauty of clean healthy athletics.
Related Fitness Fixer on exercise and aging, and enhancing drugs:
--- Read success stories of these methods and send your own. For more, click labels under posts, links in posts, archives at right, and the Fitness Fixer Index. Subscribe to The Fitness Fixer, free. Click "updates via e-mail"(under trumpet) upper right. See Dr. Bookspan's Books, take a Class, get certifiedDrBookspan.com/Academy. ---
The 2008 US Olympic swimming trials were held June 29 to July 6 in Omaha, Nebraska, photo at left. New world records were set, including by a swimmer that the news likes to call old. Dara Torres is 41, not old for an athlete.
Swimming is the Olympic event that I trained for over many years. I have seen an assortment of training beliefs and procedures come and go, and hope to post on them as the Olympics begin August 8 in Beijing China. It may seem like a new idea that experience and years of training make you a better athlete, but it is not new to maintain skills, even improve as years pass.
Hiroshi Hoketsu, age 67, will compete in two equestrian events. He was born in Tokyo Japan in 1941.
Rajmond Debevec born in Slovenia Yugoslavia in 1963 is now going to his seventh Olympic Games at age 45. He is an Olympic and world record holder in 50m rifle shooting events.
Laurie Lever, born 1947, will compete in individual and team horse jumping at 60 years old.
John Dane III, born 1950 in New Orleans, LA, will compete for the US at age 58, and Peter Douglass, born 1955 will compete for Barbados in sailing.
Juan Carlos Dasque, born 1952, will compete for Argentina in trap shooting.
Mark Todd, born 1956, has made the New Zealand Equestrian team at age 52.
Juha Hirvi of Finland, born 1960 will go to his third Olympics at 48, competing in Men's 50m Rifle Prone and Men's 50m Rifle 3 Positions.
Canadian Donna Saworski, born 1960, made the fencing team.
Another Canadian, Leslie Thompson-Willie, born 1959, will row crew in the woman's eight, at nearly 49 years old.
Galina Belyayeva of Kazakhstan, born 1951, is scheduled to compete in shooting at age 57.Elizabeth Callahan of the US will compete in pistol shooting at age 58.
Jeff Hartwick, born 1967 qualified for pole vault. Romy Tarangul of Germany, also born in 1967, will compete in Judo at age of almost 41.
Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli, pictured at right, is a French cyclist born 1958, who won three Tour de France races, the Olympic Gold medal in the Atlanta 1996 games, a bronze at the Sydney 2000 Olympics at age 41, made the 2004 Athens Olympics at age 46, and will compete in Beijing in the Women's Individual Time Trial and Women's Road Race at nearly 50 years old (birthday is Oct 31).
Sheila Taormina, born 1969, will go to her fourth Olympics this August in Beijing. She competed in 1996 as a swimmer, the triathlon in 2000 and 2004, and will compete in the Modern Pentathlon (five events) in Beijing, making her the first U.S. athlete to compete in three sports in the Olympics.
Al Oerter, picture at left, born 1936, won four consecutive Olympic gold medals in the discus in 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968, setting Olympic records each time. At age 40 in 1976, he threw his personal best. At age 44, he qualified for the U.S. Olympics trials in 1980. That was the year of the US boycott of the summer games.
The legendary Oerter passed away last year. Thank you Mr. Oerter for your inspiration.
Mr. Jim Morris is the 1973 AAU Mr. America and 1996 Mr. Olympia Masters Over 60. He is now 72. Mr. Morris is a vegan bodybuilder who reminds people that body building involves selflessly looking outward to do good, rather than focusing only on appearance and commercialism. He urges real nutrition through healthy food, rather than artificial chemically produced supplements, and healthy movement rather than harming yourself to gain physical looks or heavier lifts.
Mr. Morris looked over my Ab Revolution book, and wrote to me that he wanted to order several copies for his clients. He wrote, "You are the first person I know of to finally get it right."
Later, after reading Health and Fitness in Plain English Third edition, he wrote, "I have a copy of "Health and Fitness in Plain English" I just received and every page I open to, I say, 'I wish I said that,' and then add, 'I have been saying it for years.' Glad someone finally put it all into print and in one volume. Thanks, Jim Morris."
Exercise and Aging - Don't Limit the Patient to Limit the Pain
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
A Reuters news item last week reports that "baby boomers" are accumulating wear and tear injuries, and they should consider cutting back on amount and type of exercise they get.
The article points out that contributors to injuries are biomechanics, poor flexibility, and "pounding" or stomping down unnecessarily hard when running, jumping, walking, etc. Even with that knowledge, the news report goes on to say the answer to reduce injuries is to cut back activity. In Sunday's Fitness Fixer post, Forearm, Upper Body and Hand Exercise, I wrote that it is not a healthful or useful solution to "limit the patient to limit the pain."
The Reuters article quoted a foot and ankle podiatrist saying, "It is really important that people continue to be physically active, but they need to think logically about how to remain active as they age… Probably when you start getting into your 40s and 50s, the half marathon is a great alternative (to full marathons). Or, if you did two or three marathons a year, cut it back to one a year or opt for 10K or 5K runs." The podiatrist himself is a marathoner. He stated, "Having run 25 marathons, it was hard for me to cut back."
I would suggest looking at biomechanics, poor flexibility, and "pounding" first, before telling someone to stop doing what they love:
I have some exciting developments about getting you information on Exercise and Aging. Will announce soon.
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Reader Joe Blatt recently celebrated his 63rd wedding anniversary. He was a Broadway choreographer and dancer.
He demonstrates how to keep good flexibility and balance through the ordinary daily activity of standing to put on shoes and socks, and tying your shoes.
My student Leslie is 67 years old. She has been working with me for several years. Click the arrow of this 30 second movie to watch her knock off 30 pushups.
At around the 25 second mark of this short movie, enjoy the reaction of the student who will appear at right.
Leslie holds straight neutral spine position. She does not let her lower spine sag, or her head and neck sag downward. To see a movie to practice how to change overarched hyperlordotic sagging spine to neutral spine for pushups, click Fast Fitness - Strengthen by Changing Your Plank.
Leslie says hello to all the readers and that she is strong with such great positioning due to my classes and emphasis on being able to hold up your own body weight in healthful positioning for regular daily life. I hope to post more of Leslie's and other students' happiness and strength.
Bookmark this post. Open it every day and do your 30 pushups with Leslie.
As you read this, we have been traveling for work and are again on several days of flights back to Asia, with a few errands on the way. For the next two months in Asia, I will check in and post from Internet cafes as we make our way through work and travel on overnight trains and ferries. Here is the link to the post and photos from last year on our way back.
I won't have access to Internet or e-mail for the next week. If you have questions, I won't be able to receive them until after that. Check for posts already here on Fitness Fixer. The post New Year's Resolutions Made Easy gave a list of labels that access all posts with each topic. I drafted a post on long sitting that Healthline staffer Jerry will post for you on Wednesday, thank you Jerry.
If you send photos, send small jpgs so that my e-mail does not fill, and so that I can directly upload them without finding a graphics program to resize them for posts.
Later this month, at the full moon, we hope to be learning more about wound healing at the Thaipusam. Then back to the north to the Muay Thai Monks on Horseback, and training at several places in Thai Boxing.
On our travels through Thailand we hope to see our friends, including an eagle who adopted me.
These ladies are in their 80's and 90's. Last year we all went to the King of Thailand's flower exposition. They wore their best clothes. When friends arrived with their truck, the ladies easily climbed up the tailgate over the side of the truck bed. I thought Paul and I should ride outside and let them sit inside. The daughter took my arm and said, "No. She stronger dan yooou!" They explained that the Grandmothers had sat outside all their lives, and walked before they had rides.
We will stay for some time at a school that has become a home to us. The cook there, named Ahn, escaped from desperate conditions in Myanmar (Burma). Earning a few dollars a day in Thailand, working long days without time off, is riches by comparison. One year I got her a children's ABC book to learn to read English. I was thrilled when she took the arm of another Burmese helper and sat with the book, writing in page after page. She worked on it for days. She proudly presented it to me - translated all in Burmese. She thought I wanted to learn Burmese and spent her only free time to do this as a present for me.
A few years ago, before leaving the US for Asia, some of my students asked if they could donate to help her. About 150 students enthusiastically agreed. They signed a card, that we translated into Burmese. They all put money in a hat, totaling strangely, only about $50. I matched it to make a $100 gift. This is more than a month's salary for Ahn. We could give her much, put her niece through school, with so little.
I put it in a drab little purse and wrapped it as a present. Ahn graciously received the gift of what she thought was an ugly cheap bag. She smiled and thanked us and bowed low. I told her, "Look inside later." The next year, we found that she donated the entire amount to the temple to ask for blessings - for us.
At the same school, the Grandmother there is a feisty funny lady. We came to love her quickly and look forward to seeing her every year. She is in her 90's. I am not sure exactly, but maybe more than 95. She loves to joke and tease. In the photo above she is sitting at lunch that Ahn brought. She sits easily in full squat and rises easily.
Once as we were entering the school, she squatted down fully to rummage through her purse to get her keys. I tried to get her photo. When she saw me raise a camera, she bolted up and ran to a table with Western style chairs, and sat there, upright, with legs crossed and hands on her knees. She said she didn't want her photo "sitting like a farmer." Nothing I could manage to ask in my best Thai convinced her to let me show the world how strong and great she is.
Last year, while visiting them, the subject of Muay Thai came up, a martial art which is the national sport. She once ran a Muay Thai school. The next thing we knew, she was giving us lessons. I trained and competed in Muay Thai in the Netherlands and Thailand, and know that she gave us all a tough training. Then she grabbed her friend, a lady in her late 80's and sat her on the floor for a lesson too. Look how easily they bend and sit on the floor in this photo.
Here is a short movie of the last 30 seconds of her giving a lesson. Click the arrow to play. Watch how easily they both rise to a stand at the end. We hope you feel happy and inspired by her, and try it too. Last summer, she passed away, strong to the last.
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - fun challenge for body stabilization, strength, speed, and balance with a friend.
Stand facing a partner
Stand on one foot, pressing the other against your partner's raised foot.
Push, pull, surprise your partner with unexpected movement change, all while remaining balanced. Change to push toe to toe and side to side.
Reader Bernie supplied this photo. His inspiring story will be posted in January. He registered for my back pain workshop two years ago, then skipped it to do surgery instead. His doctors told him that since his pain was from structural damage, that no exercise or repositioning would help. Bernie took my class two years later. Although much of the pain was from structural problems, several of which he didn't have until the surgery, we successfully fixed the worsened structural situation.
Click archives at right for more, links in the articles, and labels under each post. Have The Fitness Fixer e-mailed to you, free, using the button at top right (looks like a trumpet).
Studies first started to report the benefit of exercise to reduce incidence of colds when looking at recreational exercisers, who reported fewer colds once they began regular running. Later research on exercise, intensity, and the number of colds, found that people who exercised moderate on most days averaged one cold, while the less active group reported over four colds in the year. Related work shows that being a regular exerciser is also associated with quicker recovery from colds.
Moderate exercise also enhances immune function during the exercise and for a few hours following it. Specific research into mechanisms has found that moderate exercise speeds various immune-function cells through the body, and increases levels of the type of white blood cell called leukocytes that work to fight infection.
A 2006 randomized clinical trial found that "postmenopausal women who exercised regularly for a year had about half the risk of colds compared to those who did not work out routinely." The women in the exercise group also reduced body weight, body fat, and intra-abdominal fat from increasing their exercise level.
Too much intense exercise may lower immune function and predispose to some infectious illness shortly after the time of the exercise. The decrease seems to be temporary, similar to the increase seen around the time of moderate exercise. There is some concern that continual, intense exercise lowers immune function for longer periods. An example often offered for this is that during the Winter and Summer Olympic Games, clinicians report that "upper respiratory infections abound" and that "the most irksome troubles with athletes are infections." The situation may be more that high numbers of young people are concentrated in close quarters. Their high general health may mean that they are unlikely have other health disorders during the short period of the Games.
It is more likely that poor nutrition and insufficient rest, added to harsh, ongoing, strenuous work or exercise, decreases immune function, not just strenuous exercise alone.
Although cold and flu germs are reported to live better in the cool dry weather of fall and winter, if you are cold, caught in the rain or snow, or out in a draft, that does not make you more likely to fall prey to them. Immunology is not my field so I can only repeat what I've read. My understanding is that these germs are all around us most of the time. They are on surfaces all over our home, and workplace. Your immune system keeps them out or eats them if they try to invade (pictured to my level of understanding at right). They don't cause problems unless their number is too high and your immune system cannot deter them. I call germs the jerks of the world - they are always there and are harmless unless conditions let them under your skin with your defenses down.
Much attention is given to disinfecting yoga mats. Give attention to cleaning up your own strength against disease:
We need to start a new trend that Health is Contagious - Make Health Catching! Stand up and stretch. Do good deeds. Go now.
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Photo of cold microbe toy by dantc Photo of AntiViral cat by surekat
Fast Fitness - Functional Agility, Flexibility, Strength
Friday, November 30, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Here is Friday Fast Fitness - build balance, leg and hip strength, and flexibility as a lifestyle.
Lightly sit down on the floor and get up again without your hands.
Being able to rise from the floor is natural lifestyle movement, done in many places in the world by people up to the oldest years. My martial arts student Ms. Han demonstrates in the short mpeg movie. Click the arrow to run the video:
The third harvest is here in the Northern Hemisphere. The Hunter's Moon is bright in the sky.
The last harvest of fall is a time of endings and beginnings. More than a commercial holiday of destruction and gruesome death, the approaching winter was historically a time to reverently mark departure of the living and life-giving fields, and be thankful for the harvests they gave. Revering of elders was observed in analogy.
The first and most important precept of thousands of years of yoga and martial arts is ahimsa. Ahimsa means non-violence, non-harm, non-destruction. Ahimsa was reaffirmed in recent times by the Mahatma Gandhi, and in the West by Martin Luther King, Jr. In all the classes I teach, I remind the students that ahimsa is something you incorporate in all your actions. Don't harm yourself by sitting in injury-producing bad slouching. Don't harm yourself with bad exercise. Don't harm yourself by destructive thoughts and actions. Don't harm yourself with unhealthful food and drink. Don't harm yourself by hunching your shoulders to stress through preparing meals, when you can relax your shoulders, straighten your back, breathe, and use each stoke of washing, cutting, and preparing food as beautiful meditation in the same amount of time. Don't harm others with spiteful words, deeds, and thoughts. Don't cause others fear or pain. Don't cause yourself fear and pain.
In many of the countries where we have traveled and lived, lovely short public service announcements occur daily with kind messages of doing good. Television and radio commercials are paid for with no other purpose than to give specific positive examples of helping each other for a better world. Where we have lived in the US, continuous messages of spiteful and worse behavior are common as entertainment.
Several centers in your brain process self-control. They need exercise like anything else. Studies of imaging these brain centers in people who overeat, showed that with retraining, the centers changed in level of activity when pictures of food were viewed. "Exercising self-control" is more than an expression.
Children, and even adults, need consistent positive examples. It is good and crucial exercise. It is easy to destroy, and takes (but also gives) energy to be good. Instead of "Mischief Night" tonight, do good. Instead of spending money on destroying property with thrown eggs and toilet paper, have fun learning a healthful recipe that you can enjoy for years to come. Learn to stand on your hands safely. Paint or draw a picture of a good wish. Talk about how it can come true. Design and construct inspired homemade costumes. Help the community. Volunteer at a shelter. Exercise your spirit. Develop a fun, beautiful positive public service announcement for your home, or a commercial project, that reminds to uplift spirit and behavior. Teach a child something. Don't wait until they are already doing bad. Teach them consistently, before they know to do either, so that they will more often know to choose good and why.
The average American spends nearly $15 on Halloween candy - more than $1 billion total on unhealthful refined sugar and hydrogenated fat candy - just for Halloween. This is not parental love. It is the same as giving them cigarettes or addictive drugs. Change that. Parental love is giving them beautifully functioning self-control brain centers. Halloween story and ideas in Exercise Common Sense Discipline - Turn Down Halloween Junk Food.
Positive behavior is too important to leave up to only the schools, the entertainment industry, the government, the Internet, the home. We all add ahimsa.
Many chapters of ideas for happy bountiful living are in the book Healthy Martial Arts.
Photos of Paul Creating Good on Halloween. Can you find Jolie in the photos?
Diabetes causes such serious health problems that the risk of death is twice as high for someone with diabetes compared to someone of similar age without. More than 20 million people in the US have diabetes (colloquially called "the sugar" disease) with 2 million a year more cases diagnosed every year. Exercise has been found to be a top factor to prevent and treat diabetes.
Three main types of diabetes are type 1, type 2, and gestational.
Type 1 diabetes, where the body does not make enough insulin (in the body organ called the pancreas), is treated with injected or inhaled insulin, although nutrition and exercise changes are a fundamental part of management.
An estimated 90–95% of cases of diabetes in North American are type 2. Type 2 diabetes is also called non insulin-dependent diabetes and obesity-related diabetes. Type 2 was rare until modern sedentary habits combined with mass sales of unhealthful food.
Gestational diabetes is generally a form of type 2 during pregnancy.
In the recent past, type 2 diabetes developed only in adults as they gained weight, reduced activity, and increased packaged, commercial, unhealthful foods. An escalating phenomenon of type 2 diabetes in children is now occurring.
Approximately 85% percent of adults and children diagnosed with type 2 are overweight and less active than they could be. Type 2 is increasingly being found to be best treated with more fun movement and less bad food, a win-win situation.
Several studies have found that exercise and healthier diet are more effective than medicine for people with type 2 diabetes. A recent randomized controlled Canadian study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that people with type 2 diabetes who began exercising developed better blood sugar control, both from aerobic exercise and resistance training. Not exercising yielded no improvements in sugar control. People who combined aerobic exercise and also lifted weights had the biggest improvement. It is not known in this study if results occurred because of the type of exercise mattered, or because the duration of exercise was greater in the combined exercise training group. According to an editorial co-published with the study, "Doctors should prescribe exercise to all type 2 diabetes patients who are healthy enough to work out."
In the past people with diabetes and diabetes-related complications were discouraged from exercise. However, exercise has been known in the past, with recent substantiating studies, to be the top factor to prevent and reverse diabetic problems. According to William Kraus, MD, of Duke University Medical Center, "Failing to prescribe exercise to patients with diabetes is simply unacceptable practice."
Things To Help
You do not need a gym or special clothes or equipment to get aerobic or weight lifting exercise.
Go outdoors for a break every day that you can, for fresh air, sunshine, and fun movement.
For both active and resistance exercise indoors and out, remember that daily healthful movement easily accumulates from your healthy bending, balancing while dressing, taking the stairs, and other daily real life movement.
Have fun - skate, bowl, cycle, walk, go dancing, gardening, shoot hoops, take food to shut-ins and get them moving too, with improvised exercise of moving arms and legs, clapping, singing, and having fun.
For fun exercise-as-lifestyle ideas, check through lists of Fitness Fixer posts, linked at the right of each article.
My post Hyperbarics for Diabetic Foot Injury gives more information on preventing amputations from diabetic wounds, and lists some of the ways that exercise reverses the contributors and complications of diabetes.
There is great hope. Have fun making a new healthier life.
After reading about success with exercise and stretching over various posts including Monday's Getting More From a Hip Stretch, reader Dr. Alan, sent this photo at right of his mother Pearl, age 97, stretching her hip. The straighter upright you sit, and the farther toward the ankle the leg is placed over opposite knee, the greater the stretch. If you are at your desk, try putting ankle over opposite knee, keeping the lifted knee under the desk. More stretch when low desk height keeps your knee down. Pearl also does the "ankle over knee" hip stretch while standing.
Pearl gets regular leg exercise through good bending as she goes about her busy days - she bends well with one foot in front of the other - the lunge, and with feet side by side - the half-squat. This post tells why this kind of bending gives better exercise, maintains mobility, and prevents various knee problems.
Farm Work, Lifestyle Exercise, and Preventing Overuse Pain
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Jolie Bookspan, M.Ed, PhD, FAWM
Reader Ivy from New Zealand wrote me that she was house-sitting for friends on their farm. When you read her note, remember that Ivy is a great-grandmother,
"You were very much on my mind yesterday. My friends had arranged for someone to come onto the property to feed the stock. By 5pm no one had turned up so I decided that I would have to do it myself.
"Picture me pushing wheelbarrow loads of hay - carrying buckets of water to fill the troughs and so the list goes on. The paddocks were muddy so had to wear gumboots. I was terrified of falling over. Chickens to be fed, eggs to fetch, pony to be fed plus the sheep and cows. Two of the water troughs had to be filled by hand hence the buckets. I tried to crawl (yes crawl) through the bush to get the hose through to no avail. I can laugh now, however, it wasn't funny at the time.
"This is where you come in - I kept repeating these words to myself the whole time "Now do what Dr Jolie has taught you, use your abs, tuck your hip" (to neutral spine so that the lower spine does not overarch) - "Squat, Ivy, squat - don't bend over."
"The whole thing took me 2 hours - I really thought I would have back ache and that the sciatica would rear its ugly head, but no, I am fine (Jolie's note: Ivy stopped previous sciatica using these healthy techniques). My evening meal consisted of a slice of bread and some fruit - I was too tired to even think of cooking. After a hot shower, I fell into bed exhausted and slept through until 6.30am. I don't have any aches or pain.
"That was my day."
I mailed Ivy a few days later to check how she was feeling. Ivy was still great and wrote,
"The neighbours arrived to check the sheep which are ready to drop their lambs. Needless to say Dr Jolie, I am hoping that they hold off until Harriet and family arrive back home on Monday."
We will see if there will be a post about Ivy using good bending and sitting mechanics to tend birthing sheep and baby lambs.
Related Fitness Fixer articles to learn the skills Ivy used:
Readers have asked for posts on wrist strength and stopping wrist pain with use and exercise. It is in the works. I am also still working on the post I started with, where Ivy wrote of success doing a hip stretch, coming soon.
Readers, feel inspired, get out of the gym and have some fun lifestyle exercise, have fun taking photos, and send in your own success stories.
It is not true that back pain and weakness is normal with aging. It is not true that to stop the cause of back pain you must do special exercises to strengthen one specific muscle or group such as the multifidus or abdominal muscles. It is not true that you need to rest or cut back activity to stop back pain, or use special devices.
Doing specific exercises does not stop the cause of back pain. Consider the number of people who do their back exercises, then bend wrong to put down their exercise equipment and pick up their things, then spend their day sitting, walking, and bending in the injurious body mechanics that created the pain in the first place. Examples and what to do instead are in the posts: Leg Exercise That Helps Your Back and Prevent Back Surgery.
Last year, Ivy, a Fitness Fixer reader from New Zealand stopped a long disabling bout of sciatica by stopping the cause in her daily life and the exercises she was doing - Inspirational Ivy. Ivy was not sedentary. She faithfully exercised, so was surprised to wind up with sciatica so serious that she lost partial use of her leg. One of the positive changes she made was to stop doing crunches. Ivy wrote:
"I was one of these people who for years did 100 crunches a day thinking that they would strengthen my back and take away the pain. Not so. I have been following your Better Abdominal Muscles advice for a year now, it just being part of my every day life....the bonus being no more back pain."
Problems with crunches:
Most people already know that sitting rounded over the desk is unhealthy. Spinal discs are strong and withstand compression, but asymmetrical loading from chronic forward bending degenerates disc in front and bulges them outward, among other problems. The same problems occur with forward bending exercises like crunches, also called curl-ups, partial sit up, and abdominal flexes, among other names.
Crunches and other forward bending exercises do not work your abdominal muscles in the way they need to work in real life.
If you have tendency to a rounded upper back posture, have tight neck muscles, or already sit, bend, and walk around with your spine bent forward, adding to that with crunches is counterproductive.
Ivy did not have thinning bones, but for someone with osteoporosis, forward bending exercises add the possibility of promoting further kyphosis (upper back rounding) and crush fractures.
Ivy wrote me last week:
"Over that eleven-month period that it took to find your web site, I must have opened every web site there was that mentioned the word sciatica, some of which I took aboard and wondered why there was no improvement. I can smile now when I recall how a few days after following your advice, the pain had disappeared and I attended my great granddaughter's first birthday where I sat too terrified to move in case the pain resurrected its ugly head."
Ivy is a great-grandmother, and she is fitter now than when she started. She changed the way she exercised to make it functional instead of a list of arbitrary motions that did not relate to healthy movement in real life.
If you want to make one positive change for your health, stop doing abdominal crunches and use functional abdominal movement instead.
Last October, Ivy from New Zealand left a comment on Fitness Fixer how she first found me while looking for relief from severe sciatica with foot drop. For 11 months, she had tried treatment and an exercise regimen from a chiropractor. Last week, she e-mailed me a funny update of improving mobility and health from a new stretch. I started writing this post just to tell of Ivy's stretch and how readers can have the same success.
I looked over my file of Ivy's comments on Fitness Fixer and her e-mails to me over the last two years - each story weaving to the next - of improving health, mobility, and joy of life for herself and people in her community. Reading them again was like sitting by a stream that sparkled over rocks on its way by, inspiring and lovely. Some are private, some I have her permission to tell.
Last October, Ivy wrote:
Ivy wrote, "I knew I should be feeling better than I was. During those months I was continually surfing the net looking for answers, then in November 2005, I discovered Dr Jolie Bookspan's "How to fix your own pain without drugs or surgery." Everything she described was ME, 69 years of bad habits had finally caught up with me.
"So began my journey to good health and freedom from pain. I began with the pec stretch, trapezius stretch, wall stand, sitting correctly at the computer without sticking out my chin, hamstring stretch, isometric abs (no more crunches), squats and lunges instead of bad bending.
You can imagine my joy when after 2 days I was free of pain. I was so excited that I contacted Dr Jolie, who in turn, took time out from her busy schedule to e-mail me giving me further advice and exercises which I might add, I follow religiously along with a daily 30 minute walk (weather permitting).
"Some months ago, I decided to follow a vegetarian diet. I feel so well and happy, in fact, I have loads of energy. I turn 70 at the end of this month (Oct 2006) and am looking forward to the next stage of my life feeling healthy and free of pain."
This year Ivy followed up when we were corresponding on making sure of healthy nutrition:
"This is the second winter that I have not had either a cold or 'flu. For someone who was always getting the 'flu, that is really something. I put it down to my healthy vegetarian diet."
Ivy used my free web site summary sheets on fixing pain, my books, and Fitness Fixer posts. Here are links to posts Ivy used:
Wall stand - this is a quick check of functional muscle tightness to see if you can use healthful positioning for normal activity. It is described in the first paragraph of the post Fixing Upper Back and Neck Pain, above.
Isometric abs (no more crunches) - this one isn't up on Fitness Fixer yet. It is in my book The Ab Revolution and Fix Your Own Pain, and on my web site summary on functional use of abs to stop overarching the lower spine. Ivy sent a photo of doing this exercise. I will post it when I post about this fun, different, functional abdominal exercise.
The posts on lunges, Doorway Hamstring Stretch, and Functional Achilles Stretch, feature photos that Ivy sent me. I had written Ivy earlier this year asking if she could send me photos demonstrating what she is doing. She invited a neighbor to visit and take the photos, had them developed, then mailed a pack of them to me from New Zealand. Ivy writes:
"My dear 86 year old friend took them and we certainly had a lot of fun doing what I will call a "photo shoot." Bear in mind her age when I tell you that while I was trying to hold the pose, she would press the incorrect button and would have to start all over again. I would lose what I would call the correct form and so it would go on... I can now sympathize with models who have to hold poses for what seems an eternity."
In February 2007 Ivy sent an update, signing it:
"I shudder to think where I would be if I had not found your web site over 15 months ago. I mean it when I say "Thank you for helping me get my life back." I am fit, I am healthy, what more can one want in this life. I have passion about what I do something that I haven't had in a very long time."
Last week at the sports medicine conference, I talked to a researcher from Kuwait University. Dr. Jasem Ramadan presented a lovely little study called Bioenergetics of Islamic Prayers, measuring the amount of oxygen and calories the physical movements of the prayers burned.
Five standard prayers (Salat) are mandatory every day for every adult male and female Muslim. Each prayer has a continuous sequence of body movements (Rakkas) consisting of standing, bowing, kneeling and sitting. Each Rakka lasts between 3 and 6 minutes. Dr. Ramadan looked at the energy cost of two and four Rakka prayers in thirty-two male and female adults. He found that Salats have a positive effect on metabolic function. For an 80 kg person, energy cost of daily prayers was about 80 calories a day, and could be considered a form of physical activity that enhances fitness.
Dr. Ramadan told me, "The prayers have been done for thousands of years and no one thinks about it as physical exercise." I told him I think that often. I told him that Russian Orthodox prayer was pretty physical. A liturgy lasts hours, done standing and continuously crossing yourself from the floor in a squat to high overhead. Everyone including the oldest people do this, up and down, and up and down, and up and down, stretching and squatting, reaching and bending. I always thought it was group community health activity, probably found long ago to be protective against many ailments (and attributed divinely). The original yogas were the same, reaching upward to exalt the heavens, bowing, kneeling, prostrating, rising, over and over.
I told Dr. Ramadan that many Westerners aren't comfortably able to do the kneeling Rakka shown in Healthy Toe Stretches or rise to a stand without using their hands, as in the post Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise, not only the elderly, but the rest of the population too.
He seemed surprised and interested. I told him I believed that this lack of basic human movement for real daily life was a major contributor to the epidemic numbers of people who are too weak and unstable to get up unassisted, to walk without canes and walkers, have trouble taking stairs, have poor balance, and for much knee and hip pain and degeneration. Dr. Ramadan said that elders in his country do not suffer knee and hip arthritis in high numbers, and can easily rise from the floor into their old age. I told him that many Westerners are familiar with a device that is worn, with a button to press for help if they cannot get up from the floor or chair. At this point, he was sure I was kidding.
If you cannot get up from the floor or low chair easily without using your hands, you likely have dangerously decreased leg strength and balance. Use good bending to strengthen your legs and knees many times a day and improve your fitness, explained in the post How Often Should You Be Healthy? Use healthy movement every day to sit, rise, bend right, clean, garden, give thanks, stretch, take stairs, and play to get healthy functional exercise, and prevent common joint pain. That is fitness as a lifestyle.
"The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except which is worth knowing." - Oscar Wild
April 1 seems to be a day to notice, more than usual, if things in the news are not facts but April Fool. On other days, urban legends and other stories are still popular, sometimes more popular than what is really going on.
The observation that the Earth is flat seemed obviously true at one time until we had more information. It used to be a taught as a medical fact that the cause of epilepsy was masturbation. When I was in school, one of my medical books stated that you don't need to eat calcium since you can "get all you need from your bones." It is true that you pull calcium from your bones when you don't eat enough, although with unhealthy results.
The post Forensic Science told of two crime-science myths, often still taught in forensic books and popularized in television shows, which were never true. Following are more posts hoping to replace myth with information, so that you can get stronger and do more, without the injuries or restrictions in activity that are part of many fitness or injury rehab practices.
I often hear from trainers, and read in exercise books, that you cannot get stronger without lifting weights. They say that body weight is not enough. Then I watch the trainers and read what the exercise books say to do to strengthen. Often the weights they teach to lift are far lighter than the resistance your muscles get from moving your own body during a real life activity.
I see women in exercise classes lifting little two and five pound hand weights, then bend over wrong to put the weights down and bend over wrong again to hoist up their 20-pound handbag. I see knee pain patients in rehab centers with two and three-pound weights strapped on their ankle, sitting down to do little leg raises. Or, they pull stretchy bands with their leg. Then they get up and walk away with injurious body mechanics, letting their knees and ankles sag inward because they are not using their leg muscles to stop it. The unhealthy sagging grinds away joint cartilage and prevents full use of the leg muscles. They don't understand why their knees, ankles, and feet still hurt even when they "Do their exercises."
Your body weight is the most important thing you need to lift. Following are things to start with, to strengthen without a gym or equipment. The main idea of these activities is not to "do" them as an exercise 10 times, but to use them to retrain your muscles how to hold your body in healthy position, then use that healthy positioning for all daily life:
1. Hold a pushup position, called the plank, described in the post Change Common Exercises to Get Better Ab Exercise and Stop Back Pain. Understand that the point of the plank is to learn how to hold your spine straight without sagging under your body weight. I see people doing the plank all the time in gyms and fitness classes, with their bottom hiked up in the air and their low back looking like a hammock, sinking under their body weight. That is not the normal lower back curve. It is injurious overarching. Done poorly this way, the plank does little to strengthen and just pressures your lower back. Done well, the plank is excellent to strengthen your wrist. The wrist is neglected in fitness, and the resulting weakness is a common source of injury. I will post more about wrists. Do the plank every day - that is how helpful and important it is. If you can't even hold up your own body weight, you may have serious weakness.
2. Use the squat for daily bending, described in the post How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending. The point is to use this healthy bending all the time instead of bending wrong. In posts to come, I will show another way for healthy bending using a lunge position with one leg in front and the other in back.
3. If you can't sit and rise from the floor without your hands, you are too weak and tight for ordinary daily life. Try Quick and Easy Strength and Balance Exercise. Also practice getting up from your chair (safely) without using your hands or leaning forward.
5. Hang from a chining bar, a branch, a pipe, a doorjamb, or any secure overhead. Don't worry if you cannot do full pull-ups, just hold on and hang. When you can do that, hang for as long as you can from a bent-arm position, and begin trying to raise yourself (do a pull-up). Maybe you will need to start by stepping up on a box to help raise yourself, and letting yourself slowly lower without using the box. Work up to full pull-ups. If that is easy, use fewer fingers to hold on.
When the above body weight activities become too easy, do them carrying functional weight, such packages, children, books, and other common things. It is crucial to health and independence to be able to lift and move your own body weight. In posts to come I will show you how to do more with these body weight activities for more strength and fun being active. Until then, do these every day and send your photos and stories of how you got stronger and happier.
Make it your New Year's Resolutions to be strong for real life in real ways.
I received several e-mails from people who tried the Quick and Fun Arm and Body Strengthener in the previous post. Readers were happy with their new-found understanding that being able to hold up their own body weight is important, empowering, healthy, and fun. They wanted to know more about the benefits.
Strength training isn't just for big guys in a gym. You need strength to lift and carry things around the house and workplace, to lift packages, children, groceries, and yourself easily rather than struggle. By increasing strength, you can do daily activities more easily, and reduce your chance of injury while doing it. Strengthening is important to reduce, even reverse, many characteristics often mistaken for aging, Becoming weak, unsteady, and slow is not aging. Are you as active as previously? It is a simple example of "use or lose."
At the ACSM New York conference on aging earlier this month, experts explained how it used to be thought that rates of protein synthesis, meaning how much protein your body uses to rebuild itself, decline with aging. However, it is not aging, but disuse. When experimental groups of people in their 70s began being active again, their rates of protein synthesis became comparable to the groups of 30-year-olds.
In my lecture at the aging conference, I told how the common perception of not being able to get up from the floor is not aging; it is the need to regain the strength and balance to do it. Part of my lecture explained how elderly and debilitated people who could not previously lift themselves out of their chairs become more mobile from daily movement that strengthens, allowing them to get up and walk again. Everyone needs the strength to lift their own body weight up from the floor, from bed, and out of chairs. With strengthening, may people who previously needed walkers and canes, sometimes even wheelchairs, could walk unaided again, and stop needing many medicines.
Using muscles is a key part of osteoporosis prevention. The pull of muscle against bone thickens the bone. The stronger a muscle, the more it can pull on the bones it attaches to when you use it. Without exercise, you lose bone no matter how much calcium you eat. Even a young person in a cast loses bone from simple disuse.
Even people who don't do activities commonly regarded as needing strength, do daily activities like carrying grocery bags, a suitcase for travel, or a squirmy child. When your arms are weak, you are more likely to lean back to carry things on front of you, shifting the weight to your lower back. You should be able to carry everything you want without leaning back or to the side, no matter whether it is a child on one hip or grocery bags carried in front in both arms, or both. You should be able to carry a shoulder bag or knapsack on your back without leaning your body forward.
Strength is important for everyone. You don't need a gym or trainer to get stronger. You don't need to change clothes. You don't need to buy equipment. Several posts of this blog have shown how to move with healthy positioning. The next post will list several ways to use that healthy positioning to strengthen your body more each day.
Last weekend we were packing up to drive to the New York Chapter American College of Sports Medicine conference on aging. It was early and cold. At the corner where we parked, an elder woman waited at the bus stop. She stood straight as a penguin; her things hung over her walker. We were late getting on the highway. I had to get to the conference to give my lecture. I was already going to miss the first lecture given by an expert on metabolic changes of aging. This was an important conference where we would learn important ways to help older people.
She was standing alone. I thought that if she had family she would not be standing alone at a bus stop early in the morning. There was no telling where she needed to go. I wouldn't get all my required continuing education credits if I did not attend all of the meeting. We had to drive all the way to New York, and at this rate I was not even going to be on time for my own lecture. The answer was simple. We opened the door and asked her, "Where can we take you?"
We bundled her into the truck, and asked her name. "Dottie!" she said, pointing to a mole on her forehead. My husband held out his big hand and said, "I'm Paul." Dottie looked at Paul, nearly seven-feet tall, squashed in his seat with his long legs bowed around the steering wheel and his hair brushing the ceiling. She sang, "Tall Paul, he's my all…" and Paul replied, "Annette Funicello," recognizing the old song and singing it along with her. Dottie was on her way to religious services across town. We enjoyed lively conversation with her all the way there. We passed a Greek restaurant. Dottie said, "You won't believe this but I used to belly dance there." My own Grandmother studied belly dancing into her 90's so I believed Dottie. I said, "Belly dancing is good for the hips." Dottie winked, "Belly dancin' is good for lots of things."
We dropped Dottie off at her destination and made sure she had her hat and scarf and gloves and some of our food and a hug. We gave her our number and said, "We won't be passing by in time to take you back home. Call us to go somewhere else sometime."
We met heavy traffic getting to the Lincoln tunnel. I won't get all my continuing education credits from the conference that was supposed to teach us about how to help old people. In posts coming soon I will tell about the lecture I gave on improving musculoskeletal health for older people. Although it is a common misconception to think that ruinous losses of bone density, strength, balance, and flexibility are unavoidable with aging, it is not the case, and at any age, even advanced years, you can still get stronger, faster, more flexible, and better balance through easy daily activity. You can also improve the most important aspect of helping aging people - by helping.
I heard a radio program about yoga for senior citizens. The yoga program directors made the usual statements about yoga helping strength and balance. Then they said something that seemed at odds with their goal. They said, "If your balance is poor, do the moves sitting down or hold on to the wall." The very thing that you need to improve your balance is to practice standing and (safely) not holding the wall. If you sit and hold on, you prevent practicing balance.
Balance that helps your normal daily life is easy to improve at any age. All you need is to stand up and balance. Balance is quickly lost with sitting and disuse.
How does balance practice help you? You have receptors in all your joints that sense positioning. They can tell if you are about to fall. They tell your body to send signals to your muscles to steady you. If you don't use your balance sensors with balance practice, they become slow and unable to sense positioning well. You may tip over far enough to fall before your receptors sense it and can tell your muscles to pull you to upright position. Balance practice also improves your muscles. Without balance practice, your muscles become too slow and weak to prevent you from tipping over and falling. If you have let yourself become tight, brittle, and weak from lack of general exercise, you may strain, tear, or break something from a fall that would not have otherwise caused any harm.
Years ago when I left working in the hospital to go into private practice in sports medicine, I found that by making house calls you learn the reasons for people's pain and injuries that you will never see in a hospital or clinic exam setting. It was the first time I ever saw anyone have to sit to put on or take off their shoes. Here are a few quick, functional (real life) ways to improve balance:
Stand up when you put on your socks or hosiery.
Stand up to put on your pants. Lift one leg in front of you, keep your upper body comfortably straight and upright, and slide on each pant leg.
Stand up to put on your shoes. Try two ways: holding the foot in the air front of you to place the shoe, and by crossing the ankle on the opposite knee.
For more balance, after putting on one sock or shoe, remain standing on one foot and do a small squat on one leg to reach the other sock or shoe on the floor.
If you can't stand to dress yourself, and you have at least one working leg, you may be too tight and weak and unsteady for healthy normal life. To get started:
Practice standing on one foot without holding on to anything. If balance is poor stand near a wall for safety to get started and have a skilled friend help. Practice standing for 10 counts without holding on. Increase how long you can balance.
Stand on one foot and swing the other forward and back, side to side, without holding on or touching down. Safely.
If you use a cane, practice walking holding it off the ground. Use your brain to do this intelligently and safely to improve balance and reduce dependence on the cane.
Balance is "use or lose" and can be quickly improved with safe smart practice. You don't need to go to a gym or "do exercises." Use balance skills as part of your daily life.
Several readers sent e-mails about the last post, asking about being able to sit on the floor. Many said they are so tight and weak that it is hard for them to get down, and not comfortable to sit comfortably and straight, as in the photo at left. Others wrote applauding that I am getting the message out that sitting comfortably on the floor is a normal ability, not strange or extreme.
First, don't be shy about posting replies and comments on this blog instead of e-mailing me privately. Next, sitting comfortably on the ground or floor is not an advanced athletic contortion. It is an entry-level physical ability that is crucial for normal physical function of your body.
If you don't have the stretch, strength, and balance to do this most basic of movements, you have severe weakness and tightness. It is not just people who don't exercise. I have seen aerobics instructors and personal trainers who cannot sit comfortably straight on the floor. Their hip is so tight from all the forward bending exercises they do that their hip rolls and rounds under them, which shifts their body weight to their discs and lower back. They may do artificial gym exercises, but cannot easily get down to the floor without using their hands because they have not trained movement that is useful to daily life, called functional exercise.
For a quick exercise to improve strength and balance, try this:
Stand up.
Easily and lightly, sit down on the floor without using your hands to get down.
Sit by crossing your ankles and lowering into a cross-legged sit, or by squatting straight down, or lightly and softly kneeling on one knee then sitting. Experiment until you can do all three ways.
Don't thump down hard on the floor. Use your leg muscles to lower softly with shock absorption.
Sit straight without rounding your back forward or curling your hip under you.
Stand up again without using your hands to get up.
Do this "sit and rise" exercise several times in a row. It is more useful and effective than doing little leg raises or presses in a gym. Don't be put off if you can't do this right away. Practice (safely) and you will quickly get stronger and more flexible, with better balance. When your strength improves so much from practicing sitting and rising from the floor that your body weight is not enough to give you exercise, sit and rise from the floor holding children or packages.
You can sit and rise from the floor ten times a day as an isolated exercise then spend the rest of your day sitting in a chair, but it makes more sense to sit and rise from the floor for real life. Sitting on the floor is not a strange or rare thing only done in poor villages far away. It is done in a great part of the world's countries, even in developed cities, and in our home. When you come to eat with us, you will sit at a low table on the floor by the fire. It's nice.
Sitting and rising from the floor is one of the many ways that much of the world gets built-in leg exercise and protects their hip joints from stiffening, arthritis, and bone loss. You will see grandparents easily lifting grandchildren, and other loads. They get bone-building strength, flexibility, and balance every day through their real life, and don't need to buy little machines or go to trainers to do ten little repetitions of an artificial movement. So can you.
Conference on Aging Dec 2, 2006 in Midtown New York
Friday, November 24, 2006
Healthline
The Greater New York Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) will hold a conference on aging on Saturday, December 2nd, 2006 at the Flatotel, 135 W. 52nd Street between 6th & 7th Avenue, in New York City.
In one fast moving day, there will be nine lectures by authorities on metabolic changes of aging, cardiovascular changes and the benefits of exercise, exercise in older patients with heart failure, neuromuscular training for the older population, psychosocial aspects, physical training for older clients with special conditions, and nutritional needs of older populations. I will be giving a lecture called "Three Quick Techniques for Three Musculoskeletal Problems Confused for Aging."
Many of the declines that come with doing less are often confused with aging. A stiff and rounded upper back, for example, is not necessarily aging, but practice. Are you sitting rounded forward reading this right now? Do you spend your day rounding over your desk and steering wheel, then go to the gym and bend forward for crunches, leg lifts, Pilates, and toe touches? Do you bend your neck down to do biceps curls? No wonder it's hard for you to straighten out. How long will you practice unhealthy bent forward position before you get stuck that way? There is no need to exercise in the very way that is not healthy when you do it sitting at your desk. There are better ways.
Much of the loss of strength and balance over the years is from disuse not aging. Many people do not use their legs for the hundreds of times each day they need to bend. They bend wrong, throwing their weight on their spine. Their back hurts and their legs and hips tighten and weaken. Eventually they find they are unable to sit comfortably on the floor, and more worryingly, cannot rise from the floor, or even from their chair without using their hands. This is debilitating weakness, and a dangerously unhealthy cycle of use or lose. It is not aging. In cultures where sitting and rising from the floor is a daily activity, people of 90 have the strength and balance to do it. They do not suffer the rates of falls, osteoporosis, arthritis, and cardiovascular disease of less active populations.
My lecture will cover three easy techniques to maintain and improve spine health and muscle strength. Come say hello. The meeting is designed for allied health practitioners, but is open to the public, with reduced registration fees for members of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) New York Chapter. Contact Felicia D. Stoler, MS, RD (732) 946-4436, or e-mail fstoler@att.net
My Tuesday night martial arts students worked hard last night on sweeps, falls, tumbling, and quick recovery to their feet. Each week they also learn a new jump rope technique. They have been getting good at fast skipping, crossing the rope in multiple spins to the front, sides, and overhead, and varied footwork during jumps.
When landing from jumps, it is important not to let your knees knock inward under your body weight (photo at left). It is important for knee health not only when jumping, but descending the stairs, bending for all daily needs, and even getting in and out of your chair.
Letting your weight fall to the inside of your knee joint, instead of holding your weight evenly on your knees using your own leg muscles, adds load and wear to the cartilage on the inner surface of the knee bones, stresses the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in the middle, overstretches the ligament on the inner side of the knee, and can damage a meniscus. A menscus is one of two small cushions in each knee between the knee bones. Letting knees sway inward more commonly damages the medial meniscus (the inner one) although either or both can be stretched or twisted by bad knee positioning. Letting your knees sway inward is not a "condition," and not unavoidable or something you are born to have. It is a posture you can control using your own muscles to hold your legs from swaying inward.
A while back I took a box-aerobics class because I had a coupon for a free week at a local club. The woman in front of me was stomping up and down as she swatted the air. Her knees bumped together every time her feet landed. Her feet were at least ten inches apart yet her knees bashed together, over and over, bending inward at the knee joint. It was alarming.
Don't let your knees (or ankles) sway inward under your weight. Use your muscles to hold knees in position, over your feet:
When landing, land lightly - softly. Don't pound. The only noise should be the whirring of the jump rope, not your feet slamming the ground, transmitting shock to your knees and hips, and up your spine.
Bend your knees lightly when you land. Don't land straight-legged.
When you bend your knees for landing, don't let them sway inward.
Keep kneecaps facing the same direction as toes, not twisting inward.
Land softly, on the ball of the foot first. Quickly bring heels down while bending knees to absorb impact.
Remember healthy knee positioning during all activities. Look at your own knees and other people's knees when they take the stairs, and when bending to reach or retrieve things for healthy bending at home and work. Notice knees when you get out of your chair and sit back down. Don't let knees sway inward. Hold them in line using your thigh muscles, not letting them angle sharply inward.
It is easy to control leg positioning for healthy knee joints while you stand, bend, take stairs, exercise, and jump so that your daily life and exercise is healthy.
Metabolism as you get older is not the culprit with much weight gain. Think of all the people who are eating more than in past years, exercising less, doing less, sitting around more, and eating junk food and soda. They gain weight and say the reason is that their metabolism slowed because they got older.
That fact that you burn fewer calories when you decrease activity can be twisted by clever product advertising as "slower metabolism." Don't fall for it. Find fun, healthy things you like to do and start them again to get the increase in metabolic calorie burning that comes with activity.
Don't fall for pills and supplements advertised to increase metabolism and therefore promote weight loss. Some contain stimulating compounds that increase heart rate or other functions. That is not helpful or healthy for your body. Many people feel stimulated and happy on these products, and don't notice the nervousness, anxiety, inability to focus, moodiness, difficulty falling asleep at night, and depression that also often occurs. A more serious cycle starts when people take other drugs to try to stop these symptoms. Then more drugs when the first drugs upset their stomach. Exercise will improve mood and increase your metabolism for weight loss more safely without the negative effects of stimulants and medicines.
Several devices, pills, and patches claim to burn calories or fat while you sleep or watch television. They can claim that because you always burn calories and fat when you sleep or watch television. That is how you stay alive. It is not because of the pill or the machine.
Eating food raises metabolism. The increase comes because your body has to do something extra – digestion. You still gain calories from the food and can gain weight if you eat more calories than you burn. Watch out for advertising that exploits the fact of the "thermogenic" (heat producing or calorie burning) effect of food. The effect is small compared to the calories you have eaten.
Some devices and pills claim to increase metabolism even after exercise ends. They can claim that because all exercise does that - with or without the device or pill. Exercise raises metabolic levels. It takes time after stopping exercise to return to resting level.
Live a healthy active life. Get outside and play. Move, bend properly (Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix), and stretch as part of your everyday life (What is "Fitness as a Lifestyle?"). Get up now and walk away from the computer to take a break, breathe, stretch arms overhead, move, look up at the sky, and smile. The average amount of money spent on diet products that don't work is saddening. Every time you want to spend on them, put the money in a jar and go do something active instead, even if it is just dusting or gardening. Lift weights, including your own body, to regain the muscle you need for metabolic rate (How Good Would You Look From 400 Squats a Day - Just Stop Unhealthy Bending). Muscle loss from sitting around is often confused with aging. You will burn some calories, keep your joints moving, feel better, and save enough to give to the poor with enough left for a vacation.
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Thank you to Paul & Aline for this photo from Creative Commons
Exercise is More Important Than Calcium Supplements for Bones
Monday, September 18, 2006
Healthline
A study making recent news concluded that taking calcium supplements does not do much to reduce bone fractures in childhood or later life. The study did not cover all reasons, but it does not stand alone. Studies over many years show that bone density depends on more than eating calcium. Calcium loss occurs through smoking, drinking too much alcohol and soda, lack of exercise, and eating animal protein. A young person can thin their bones through bad habits to the equivalent of an elderly person.
Bone density when you are older depends on what you are doing now. Sedentary lifestyle is a major risk for osteoporosis and fractures. Exercise thickens bones from the muscles pulling on them. Without exercise, you can lose bone density no matter how much calcium you eat. Without exercise, you "pee" the calcium you eat back out. You need to give calcium a reason to stick on your bones.
Even if you are a young man you need to build bone now. Osteoporotic hip and spine fractures are a major cause of illness and death for both women and men. One in eight men over age 50 will have an osteoporosis-related fracture, greater than his risk of prostate cancer. The death rate in the year following a hip fracture is nearly twice as high for men as for women.
Research in elder populations shows ability to increase bone density with exercise. Weightlifting is often mentioned as needed. People think they need to go to a gym or buy hand weights for home use. Weightlifting includes lifting groceries, children, and packages around the house. Weight-resisting activity includes moving, pulling, and lifting your own body weight. You can load your upper leg at the hip, a major site of osteoporosis, by bending right using your legs for all the many times you need to bend every day. Go to Disc Pain - Not a Mystery, Easy to Fix for tips. Future posts will show more bone building exercise from daily activities.
Several vitamins and minerals in fruit and vegetables help bone density. Calcium also needs vitamin D to work. Sunlight is an often forgotten source. Sunlight is necessary for your immune system, bones, mood, and overall health. There are some who say there is no safe sun exposure. Balance your time of exposure to reduce risk of cataracts and skin cancer. Get out of your chair and get outside in the sunshine for exercise every day.
To many people, fitness means stopping your "real life," changing clothes, driving somewhere else, and doing uncomfortable things without similarity to movement in daily life. Then they go back to "real life" - slouching, bending wrong, walking heavily, sitting rounded, leaning back to carry packages, taking elevators, and avoiding movement.
At the gym, people do squats with a trainer, paying to learn proper form and upright back, then bend over wrong to put the weight down when they’re finished. They do proper lunges for their legs in exercise class, then bend over wrong without using their legs to pick up their things when they leave. They work with weights to isolate arms but never learn how their entire body stabilizes a weight, then hurt their back opening a window at home. They work on a treadmill or elliptical trainer but sprain their ankle when out walking because they haven't trained balance and stabilization. They sit hunched in bad posture waiting for exercise class to start. In modern life, exercise is something you go and specially "do," then destroy and ignore your health the other 23 hours a day. Fitness has become “fast food” – stripped of value, sweetened up, and mass produced, even when unhealthy.
Changing your real life into healthy movement is a big and inspiring area of rethinking and retraining. Instead of sitting slouched then stopping to stretch because your back hurts, sit and stand well so that you do not get stiff and sore in the first place. Instead of lifting packages, babies, groceries, laundry, and everything else wrong all day, then stopping to do back exercises because your back hurts, lift properly. I will show you exactly how in posts to come. You will get built-in exercise, strengthen your knees, and save your back. You don’t need to go to a gym; move, balance, and reach in healthy ways in order to do your real life. Instead of thinking you must stop your life to get health and exercise, fill your life with built-in healthy movement.
Photo: National Cancer Institute, Linda Bartlett (photographer)
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