Opinion: Statistics are relied on too heavily and the people who do so try to use it in the place of logic, reasoning and scientific evidence. A very dangerous pursuit.
The evidence supporting the importance of sufficient physical activity in maintaining health is pretty much overwhelming. The logic and reasoning are behind it also. In this prelude I won’t go into too much detail and will save that for The Book.
What I will outline though is how much and when in the day it should be carried out.
If your job or daily physical activity is making you sweat and getting your heart pumping, then you are one of the lucky ones. If you are more like me, with a sedentary job then you have some work to do. Do it as follows:
• If you are pretty much out of shape then you should gradually work at escalating your physical activity.
• Choose any form of exercise you want as long as it gets you sweating for about five minutes. (If you sweat too easily then aim for 15 minutes).
• Do this at least five days a week.
• Gradually escalate your length and intensity of exercise targeting 30 -60 minutes of exercise per session.
• Listen to what your body tells you. A mild ache the next day is acceptable but don’t overdo it. The intent is to get good blood flow throughout your body and to stimulate it to transform your body into an energy producer. In other words to get your body out of being in a storage mode.
• Since the human’s body is designed to walk for good distances therefore my bias is for walking.
• For the out of shape people: do your sessions at least eight hours after you wake up from your main sleeping cycle. After getting in better shape you may do it earlier.
• Consult your doctor.
I think that streching before and after exercise is helpful .Keeping your self well hydrated is important also.
ReplyDeleteMay Al-Abousi M.D
Internal Medicine
Excellent points again Doctor. “I think that stretching before and after exercise is helpful.” Stretching is definitely an important aspect of implementing a safe comprehensive physical activity plan. It helps in pain relief, decreasing musculo-skeletal injuries, increasing range of motion, fortifies good posture, improves tone and I personally have learned the hard way how valuable your point is (torn hamstring twice, torn medial collateral ligament once, torn quadriceps once). A notable tidbit here is the time for each stretch position should be a minimum of 25 seconds. This is important in order to stimulate the stretch receptors and other neurons necessary for improving the status of muscle tone and other associated reflexes of musculo-skeletal activity. Whether maintaining the stretch position longer than 30 seconds is beneficial or not, I am not sure. But in Yoga the time is usually longer than 30 seconds and that appears to be beneficial for Yoga practitioners. This last statement is based on observation alone without a scientific analysis.
ReplyDelete“Keeping your self well hydrated is important also.” Again a very relevant point for exercise and here I would like to highlight two important factors. One is to use the color of urine output as your guide on how much to hydrate. Target a very light yellow (closer to water than not). Increase your fluid intake if it is darker. Also target at least two urine outputs per day, which have resulted from the urge to urinate (i.e. urinary bladder pressure). What fluid to choose somewhat depends on whether or not you sweat minimally or profusely in your physical activity. If you don’t sweat then water alone is fine. If you do sweat to a noticeable degree then I recommend intaking fluids that have electrolytes (sodium, chloride and potassium) in them. Examples are Gatorade, Powerade, etc. I personally prefer tomato juice diluted with water 1:1. Another option is fruit juice diluted 1:1 with water and add a 1/4 teaspoon of salt per quart (which is about 1.5 grams of sodium chloride. The potassium will already be there from the fruit. Assuming good quality and natural origination of course.
Note to patients: above doesn’t apply to people suffering with heart failure, or renal insufficiency or other conditions which have a disturbance in their systemic fluid balance. It does apply though to those with essential hypertension.