How Play and Exercise Can Save Your Life

“I really don’t like to jog. It makes the ice jump out of my glass.”

“Now that I’m older, I notice it’s my knees that buckle and my belt doesn’t.”

Why should you bother to exercise?  You’re happy with the way things are – a few aches and pains, occasional sleepless nights, and being out of breath after ascending stairs is the most excitement you can handle.  This is what you were told to expect about getting old, right?  Wrong.

Studies show that exercise has myriad benefits for keeping you healthy and prolonging your life.  For one, it reduces your risk of dying prematurely.  At the same time, your exercise patterns in midlife and late adulthood will predict your subsequent disability at the end of your life.  Not only do people with healthy habits (no smoking, proper weight and regular exercise) live longer, but their end of life disability is shorter and less intense.

Exercising helps reduce the risk of dying from heart disease, from developing diabetes, from developing high blood pressure, and from developing colon cancer.  By exercising, you help maintain your appropriate weight, which, with a proper diet, helps prevent diabetes, a chronic metabolic disease which affects your ability to produce or properly use insulin.  Insulin, a hormone, is needed to convert sugar into energy.  When your blood sugar is unregulated (meaning there isn’t enough insulin to do the job), conditions develop which can lead to damaged blood vessels and tissues, which lead to heart disease, blindness or kidney problems.

When you look at the diseases which kill Americans, 9 of the top 10 are the result of lifestyle.  Some of these diseases include heart disease, malignant cancers, strokes, lung disease, diabetes, pneumonia, septicemia and kidney disease.  Every one of these diseases has a preventable component to it, and that includes exercise.  Heart disease is the number one killer in America, due to poor diet and inactivity.  Your heart is a muscle, and muscles are meant to move.  The more you (safely) challenge your heart, the stronger it becomes, and the less work it has to do in order to pump your blood around your body. Additionally, with a stronger circulatory system, with stronger arteries and veins, you reduce your risk of stroke and strengthen your immune system.  This helps decrease your risk of infections, such as pneumonia and septicemia.

Regular exercise also promotes psychological well-being and decreases feelings of depression and anxiety.  This is due to the proper production and regulation of hormones which control your moods and your response to stress.  The most obvious result of exercise is that it helps build and maintain healthy bones, muscles and joints.  This is known as the training effect.

The training effect is the response of your body, at the cellular level, to physiological demand and (positive) stress.  Challenge your cells to do more and eventually they will rise to the challenge.  However, it is the consistent, systematic and repetitive activity that causes your cells to grow.  It is this training process that allows you to regain some, if not most of what you’ve lost physically.  This training effect defines aging not from overuse but from lack of use.  When you become tired or fatigued from activity, it usually is not from doing too much, but from doing too little.  So how, and what can you choose to do more?

You want to engage in some form of aerobic exercise that will improve your heart, lungs, muscles, and organs.  You want to do it consistently, a number of times per week, but you may vary your activities and still get the same results.  You want to make sure that your exercising fits in with your needs, interests, and lifestyle, and that it is convenient and enjoyable.  It should not be a chore.  Moderation is also a key in maintaining good health and preventing disease.  For example, gardening for 2 hours will be similar to walking for 30 minutes, which is comparable to jumping rope for 15 minutes.  Even doing 10 minutes of an activity three times in a day will bring you benefit. Please note that if you have any history of health problems, it is wise to first get checked out by your primary physician.

Here are some suggestions for picking an activity. If you’re out of shape, consider taking up dancing, bicycling, rowing, skating, swimming, or walking.  With each of these sports, you can begin easily with less intensity and take more time.  As you become stronger, you can gradually increase the intensity and decrease the time.  If you are easily bored, you should consider picking a sport that requires a partner or team, like basketball, racquetball, soccer or tennis, along with the previously mentioned dancing, bicycling and skating.  If you hate to sweat, then your only real choice is swimming.

If you have joint problems, consider bicycling (stationary), mini-trampoline, swimming, aqua aerobics or walking. Studies show that people with arthritis who exercise actually experience a relief of symptoms that can last for hours after exercising. If you just want to be alone, add jogging, jumping rope, rowing and skating to the previous list.  If you like company, which I recommend you do (to help you stay accountable), then nearly all sports mentioned can be done with a partner or as part of a team, along with volleyball and softball.

Additionally, weight lifting can be employed by persons of all ages and should supplement your aerobic activities.  Studies from Tufts University Center on Aging found that even “frail” elderly men and women improved their strength, bone density, balance and energy with weight training twice a week.  In every case, people who are consistent and who pay attention to the three variables of frequency (how often), duration (how long) and intensity (how hard) will reap the benefits of good health for many years to come.

Do not think for one minute that you are too old to exercise.  Many of the studies I am referring to were done with older folks.  These studies found that weight-bearing exercises helped improve bone density, which leads to a decrease in fractures.  By age 50, most people are losing bone density at the rate of 1% to 3% a year (women more, men less).  A study of women aged 50 to 70 actually increased their bone density 1% after a year of exercising twice a week.   Those same exercises can help improve balance and increase energy.  Many of the test subjects noted that they slept better and longer.

The benefits are there if you are willing to make the investment to exercise.  Become so healthy that you live long enough to spend all of your children’s inheritance.

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