Fitness

Exercise helps to prevent heart attacks, but exercise does not prevent plaques from forming in arteries. What you eat is far more important in determining how much plaque you have in your arteries, so even competitive master athletes should follow a heart-healthy diet. A recent study showed that lifelong male athletes older than 40 had increased markers that doctors use to predict a future heart attack.

Many exercise programs and tests used to measure heart function are based on an unreliable MAXIMUM HEART RATE formula that predicts the fastest your heart can beat and still pump blood through your body. Although this formula is the golden standard used today, it is not based on science.

Interval training means that you alternate bursts of intense exercise with slow exercise until you feel tired. Short intervals are defined as lasting less than 30 seconds each, while long intervals usually last more than two minutes each. The most efficient, time-saving and health-benefiting way to exercise is to use short intervals

If you want to improve your level of fitness, you can try interval training, the technique used by athletes in sports requiring speed and endurance such as cycling, skiing, running or swimming. They exercise very intensely, rest, and then alternate intense bursts of exercise and rest until their muscles start to feel heavy or tired.

Muscles are made up of thousands of muscle fibers just as a rope is made up of many strands. Each muscle fiber has a nerve that innervates it. With aging you can lose nerve fibers that, in turn, cause you to lose the corresponding muscle fibers, but exercising against resistance will make the remaining muscle fibers larger so they can generate more force. The repetition of a regular and consistent training program teaches your brain how to contract your muscles more efficiently.

Even short periods of inactivity cause dramatic loss of muscle size and strength. After just two weeks of having one leg put in a cast, all 32 men in the study lost a tremendous amount in all measures of physical fitness, strength and muscle size in the immobilized leg. After six weeks of pedaling a bicycle for rehabilitation, they still did not regain all of the strength that they had lost

Always try to keep at least a slight bend in your knee when you run or ride a bicycle. When you run, you are supposed to land on each foot with a partially-bent knee. Otherwise you transmit the shock of your foot hitting the ground directly onto your knees, hips and back. Straightening your knees when you pedal markedly increases risk for knee pain by increasing the force on your joints.

An analysis of more than 36,861 deaths in a study of 403,681 participants found that the greater proportion of vigorous exercise to total exercise, the less likely a person was to die, die from a heart attack, or die from cancer during the 10 study years. The U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines recommend trying to exercise for 150 minutes a week for optimal health, and  this study showed that compared to people who do not exercise that much, people who exercise 150 minutes or more each week are 15 percent less likely to die, 23 percent less likely to suffer heart disease and 12 percent less likely to develop a cancer.

A new study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that approximately 110,000 U.S. deaths could be prevented each year if adults over 40 added 10 minutes of daily physical activity to their normal routines (JAMA Internal Medicine, Jan 24. 2022). For this study 4840 adults, 40-85 years old, wore an accelerometer for seven days and were followed for 9-12 years. Increasing moderate to vigorous activity by 10 minutes/day was associated with a 6.9 percent decrease in date rate.

A study from the University of Copenhagen shows that wearing an immobilizing knee brace for just two weeks caused men in their 20s to lose 22 to 34 percent of their leg muscle strength, while men in their 60s lost 20 to 26 percent.

People who want to grow larger muscles spend more than 10 million dollars a year on whey protein shakes. A new study on mice shows that these whey protein shakes contain very high levels of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), which can reduce certain brain hormones to increase risk for obesity and premature death.

Athletes use interval training to make themselves faster and stronger, and everyone with a healthy heart can benefit from this technique. A typical interval workout for non-competitive exercisers would be a session of jogging, walking or cycling in which they sarm up by moving slowly for about 10 minutes, pick up the pace until they feel a slight burning in their muscles (this usually takes 10-20 seconds), slow down as soon as they feel this muscle burning, and go slowly until the burning is gone and breathing is back to normal.

Achilles tendinitis means you feel pain in the large tendon that extends from in the back of your heel to your calf muscle. It hurts most when you get up in the morning and when you start to walk or run. It will heal only if you stop running and find another sport that doesn't hurt when you do it, such as cycling, swimming, or pulling on a rowing machine.

Running a marathon may strengthen the cartilage and muscles in knee joints. Marathon runners their MRIs showed a remarkable reduction in the knee bone and cartilage damage and marked strengthening of the knees.

A new review of 15 studies shows that protein supplementation offered no added benefit for older weight lifters.

The training principles that improve performance in competitive athletes can be used by all exercisers, even those who have never exercised previously, and can help to prevent heart attacks and prolong lives. Exercise helps to prevent heart attacks because exercise makes muscles stronger, including your heart muscle.

Sleeping can help to prevent exercise injuries. Healthy U.S. soldiers in training are less likely to suffer exercise-related injuries such as fractures, sprains and muscle strains when they sleep at least eight hours at night.

The CARDIA study followed 5115 adults in nine separate examinations over a period of 30-40 years, from ages 18-60. By age 60, 73.1 percent of the subjects in this study had developed high blood pressure, and the lower the level of physical activity, the more likely a person was to develop high blood pressure

A recent study found that the incidence of running injuries can be markedly reduced by increasing the cadence during running, which helps to reduce the impact force of your feet hitting the ground. Most running injuries are caused by the high impact of your foot hitting the ground, which is determined most by the length of person's natural stride

Up to 70 percent of North Americans adults will develop diabetes or pre-diabetes, usually from insulin resistance caused by excess fat in the liver and muscles. Exercise helps to empty fat from the liver and muscles, so exercise helps to prevent and treat diabetes.

I have often recommended that exercisers take a sugared, caffeinated soft drink for a performance boost during prolonged vigorous exercise. I still think this is good advice, but people who are exercising at a casual pace for an extended time may want to restrict their intake of soft drinks

Second wind means that when you run very fast, you reach a point where you gasp for breath and your muscles burn so much that you feel like you have to slow down, but you try to keep on pushing. After several seconds, you feel recovered and pick up the pace.

Junk miles means adding extra miles to your training plan with no purpose other than to increase the number of miles that you ride or run each week. They are done at such low intensity that you do not become short of breath and you do not push yourself very hard.

Nobody should ever die of heat stroke, a rapid uncontrolled rise in body temperature that causes you to pass out. Your body sends you warning signals as your temperature rises.

In the 1920s, experiments suggested that the accumulation of lactate acid in the bloodstream interfered with a person’s ability to exercise by causing muscles to stop contracting. However, Carl and Gerty Cori won the 1947 Nobel Prize for discovering the “Cori Cycle,” in which lactic acid produced by reduced oxygen levels from intense exercise may be good for exercisers when it travels from muscles to the liver, where lactic acid is converted to the sugar, glucose, to be used by muscles to supply extra energy

It is very common for recreational exercisers to take NSAIDs, such as Advil, Motrin or aspirin, to lessen muscular pain, but NSAIDs can interfere with muscle growth by delaying recovery from exercise. To strengthen a muscle, you have to take an intense workout that damages muscle fibers to make them feel sore on the next day.

Endurance training for six weeks in humans and mammals has been shown to increase mitochondrial content from 30 to 100 percent and volume density up to 40 percent.

Several recent studies show that if you don't follow your hard workouts with easy ones, you may suppress your immunity to increase risk for developing infections such as colds and increase your chances of injuring yourself.

Cycling is not associated with increased risk for impotence or urinary symptoms. The largest and best study on the subject to date shows that serious cyclists are no more likely to suffer impotence or urinary problems than swimmers or runners.

A review of 54 studies found that a regular exercise program strengthens the immune system, increases antibody response to vaccinations, and reduces risks for community-acquired infectious disease by 31 percent and death from infections by 37 percent in various populations. It does this by increasing IGA antibodies in all body cavities and CD4 T cells that help to kill invading germs.