Exercise can reduce all kinds of health risks for senior citizens. Here’s how to get started. – Barron’s

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The CDC’s recommendations for daily exercise can be fulfilled by attending the gym at least twice per week, and taking 30-minute walks on the remaining five days.


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Imagine a medication that reduced the mortality rate for breast cancer as well as the risk of recurrence up to 50 percent, reduced the risk from colon cancer, type 2 diabetes and other cancers by a third and hypertension, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease by forty percent. Additionally, it could be just as effective as antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy for battling depression.

This medicine exists, according to the doctor. Edward Laskowski of the Mayo Clinic: It’s called exercise.

“Movement can be medicine” declares Dr. Laskowski an expert in rehabilitation and physical medicine who says that the health benefits that he lists have been demonstrated repeatedly through high-quality research.

There is no need to do marathons to reap the benefits of exercising. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that adults reap the benefits of exercise by consuming at minimum 150 mins of moderate or vigorous exercise per week, and at minimum two sessions of weight-training.

You can adhere to guidelines set by the CDC guidelines by attending the gym at least twice per week, and taking 30-minute walks every other day According to Mary Edwards, director of fitness at the Cooper Fitness Center in Dallas.

However, any activity is more beneficial than no. Studies have shown that people can boost their health with just 10 minutes of exercise each week the doctor. Laskowski says. Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

What kind of exercise is the best for you? While any type of exercise is beneficial in terms of health benefits, various kinds of exercises can help you in various ways. As you can imagine, your cardiovascular system receives the greatest boost through aerobic exercise.

Doctors once recommended that you maintain the same pace such as walking or cycling swimming for at about 20 minutes at a minimum. This method still works.

However, in recent years there has been a renewed focus on intense training. Instead of exercising at a constant pace all the time, you can do brief periods of exercise at maximal effort, followed by periods of rest or time to rest.

This provides you with every benefit of aerobic exercise but in less time, and also a few other benefits. For instance, exercise that is high intensity seems to be more effective at reducing the bad kind of cholesterol (LDL) and increasing glucose levels in the fasting phase.

In general, high-intensity workouts are performed in 85%- 90 percent of your maximal effort. There is no need for heart-rate monitors or other expensive equipment to figure out the ideal intensity. Research has shown that the way you perceive exertion can be as precise. If you’re racing at the fastest speed it is possible for 30 seconds then a few hours of walking you’re performing intense exercise.

“It’s simply a matter of having short intervals of intense effort with high intensity, before allowing yourself to slow down and gradually come back to a slower speed,” says Edwards of Cooper Fitness.

As we age lifting weights becomes more important for reducing muscle and reduction in bone volume. The CDC recommends lifting weights at least twice per week, and work all major muscle groups, which include the hips, legs, back, abdomen, shoulders, chest and arms.

“Everybody is likely to lose muscle and bone as they age,” says Dr. Jonathon Sullivan, co-author an exercise book for people who are over 40 “The barbell prescription.” “It’s simply a reality of life. But the goal is to hold on as long as you can.”

Doctor. Sullivan, who worked for many decades as an emergency rooms physician advises against exercising just because you’d like for a longer life span. Your objective should be to be as healthy as you can in the time you live.

“What we’re trying do is to make the death portion of our lives more short and the living portion of our lives more long,” he says.

Twice a week, 73-year old Carol Bateman of Kingwood, Texas is seen lifting barbells that weigh nearly as much as she lifts and performs deadlifts or squats. Bateman has lifted for 14 years. “I realized that I was getting older and had to do everything I could to hold off anything nature could send my way,” she says.

Her trainer, Andy Baker, who co-wrote “The Barbell Prescription,” stresses heavy lifts such as deadlifts and squats that strain the muscles in the hips and back. “It helps to stop the trend of weakening as well as losing muscle mass and decreasing bone density” Baker says. Baker. “And there’s the double benefit of enhancing balance.”

Ideally, mix the lifting of weights and aerobic exercise. If you’re really pressed for time it is possible to accomplish this by adding just a few minutes of intense exercise following your gym exercise. Baker often asks his clients to push the sled with a weighted.

If you have more time, you can perform separate sessions of weight-training moderate exercise, high intensity exercises in one week.

It’s not necessary to get carried out in the gym. The doctor. Laskowski says he tries to be active all day, climbing the stairs and parking farther away from his office work.

For work that requires high intensity for high-intensity work, for high-intensity work, Dr. Laskowski walks up and down a hill that is steep near his home.

“I have accumulated 10,000 to 15,000 steps every daily,” He says. “The more you can incorporate activities into your schedule the more beneficial.”

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