Month: June 2023

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5 Reasons For Daily Exercise

5 Reasons For Daily Exercise. It is no secret that exercise is an absolute must for those of us looking to enjoy not only an increased quantity of life but more importantly, quality of life. Regardless of your age, gender, schedule, or any other component of your day-to-day routine, devoting adequate time to physical activity that gets your body moving is vital.

While it is certainly true that exercising provides an increased quality of life for individuals of every age, as we reach our later years the need for physical fitness becomes even more necessary. In this article, we will discuss 5 key reasons why consistent physical activity is mandatory to enjoy as much functionality as possible throughout the aging process.

1. Supporting Skeletal Health

The strength of the skeleton is usually measured by a parameter known as bone mineral density (BMD). This basically describes the overall resiliency and strength of the tissue comprising our bones.

Unfortunately, this value begins to decline as we age, starting as early as 40 years old! Women tend to experience an even more rapid decline in bone mineral density due to hormonal changes inherent to menopause. Estrogen is a key hormone involved in maintaining bone strength, and the significant drop in estrogen that occurs during menopause directly affects BMD. However, consistent exercise is an effective way to mitigate this process for both men and women.

2. Avoiding Excessive Cognitive Decline

As unfortunate as it may be, our cognitive ability experiences a somewhat progressive decline as we age. While this process isn’t nearly as rapid as popular opinion may have led you to believe, the process itself is real. Specific cognitive abilities such as memory and processing speed tend to show the most significant deterioration with age.

Numerous studies have supported the theory that exercise has a direct correlation with the rate of cognitive decline throughout the aging process. Older individuals who exercise regularly experience a drastic increase in cognitive function when compared to their sedentary peers.

3. Improving Balance with daily exercise

One of the biggest detriments to function in the elderly population is falling. Serious injuries such as broken bones are a setback to physical activity at any age. However, the decreased rate and extent of healing that occurs with aging cause these injuries to be even more catastrophic. Fortunately, exercise is a great way to improve and maintain balance and body awareness. Given that most forms of exercise involve moving the body through difficult ranges and motions against resistance, navigating through everyday life becomes much more effortless.

4. Maintaining Strength Reserves

Another biological process associated with aging is the decrease in overall strength and muscle mass throughout the entire muscular system. There is a various array of specific mechanisms responsible for this decline such as down-regulation of anabolic hormones like testosterone and HGH.

Similar to the previous misfortunes pertaining to aging, this process is anything but a fixed-rate decline. Exercise is obviously beneficial to increasing muscle mass and strength, therefore individuals who maintain daily exercise hold on to far more of these attributes than those who do not engage in any form of resistance training.

5. Slowing The Aging Process At The Cellular Level

Without getting overly specific, exercise literally has the ability to slow down the aging process of our individual cells! Every cell has what are known as telomeres. These are basically loose ends attached to strands of DNA that become shorter and shorter each time the cell divides.

After a specific amount of divisions, telomeres are shortened to the point of non-existence and the individual cell actually dies. Regular exercise has been proven to induce genetic alterations that limit the amount of telomere shortening that occurs with each cell division.

In fact, lack of exercise carried far more severe repercussions than high blood pressure and unflattering swimsuit pictures. For most of our history, sedentary has been synonymous with death! Interestingly enough, this correlation has not been eradicated entirely

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HIIT – Burn Fat Faster

HIIT – Burn Fat Faster. The desire to lose weight and reduce excess body fat is one shared by a significant percentage of the population. Whether you find yourself needing to shed a large amount of body weight to minimize health risks or wanting to trim down a bit in order to look better for an upcoming beach vacation, this process involves the same basic principles.

burn fat faster In today’s society, we are experiencing the perfect storm in regard to poor lifestyle choices and negative dietary habits. Many of us find ourselves busier than ever, struggling to get everything done in each little 24-hour window.

This naturally leads to opting out of going to the gym and grabbing a fast food meal on the go. If your goal is to lose weight, you need a strategy that is both effective and schedule-friendly. Allow me to introduce you to high-intensity interval training, or HIIT for short.

HIIT is a form of exercise that involves short, max-effort bursts of intensity followed by brief rest periods. Unlike many exercise routines that include steady, low-intensity movements coupled with lengthy rest periods, HIIT takes a different approach to working out. Instead of spending an hour on the treadmill or scrolling through your phone in between countless sets of weight training, you could be melting through calories and fat at a far accelerated rate in greatly reduced time!

A simple example of high-intensity interval training is as follows: ten seconds of maximum effort performing a certain exercise such as sprinting, burpees, or squat jumps followed by twenty seconds of rest. This cycle is then repeated using the same or a different exercise for a time period usually lasting 4-15, and no more than 30 minutes. While this approach offers a simplistic training protocol, the physical effects are not to be underestimated.

HIIT sets itself apart from other forms of exercise in both caloric consumption and time efficiency. When you perform an exercise at maximum intensity, this obviously requires increased energy expenditure throughout the body due in part to the lack of downtime between active periods as well as accelerated heart rate. This training method actually allows you to burn even more calories (and therefore body fat) than the usual protocol in a fraction of the time.

Aside from the actual exercise structure of HIIT, the simplicity of this method provides even greater timesaving benefits. There is no need to go to the gym or possess a slew of exercise equipment to perform high-intensity interval training. In fact, you can accomplish a highly effective session everywhere from your living room floor to the local park.

Considering that the exercises performed during HIIT usually consist of bodyweight movements and aerobic activities such as sprinting or squat jumps, your gym is wherever you are.

By far the most unique benefit to HIIT is the systemic effect stimulated in the body when the exercise comes to an end. After subjecting yourself to this type of strenuous activity, a metabolic response is set off that, among other things, produces an increase in fat-burning hormones such as adrenaline and testosterone.

This phenomenon, often called the “after-burn” effect, keeps going long after you call it quits for the day. Your body will continue to burn calories at an accelerated rate for several hours after this workout session is finished!

Convenient, schedule-friendly, and remarkably effective are all fantastic elements attributed to HIIT. Don’t let your busy lifestyle allow you to believe losing weight and becoming a better version of yourself is a futile effort! Fitness doesn’t have to be complicated, and HIIT is a shining example of this truth.

Get a FREE report on how movement is important in everyday life and how we can burn fat faster.

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Improve Blood Circulation With Exercise

Improve Blood Circulation With Exercise And Why You Should. The cardiovascular system is undoubtedly one of the most crucial components comprising our anatomy. The heart works tirelessly for the entire duration of life to ensure nutrient and oxygen-rich blood reaches the billions of individual cells present throughout the body. I think we can all agree that this process should be allowed to perform its duty as efficiently as possible!

Regular physical activity is an extremely effective means of fortifying the cardiovascular system and allowing the heart to function at a greatly increased capacity. In this article, we will get into some of the specific benefits that exercise to improve blood circulation.

Although a very unique one, the heart is but another one of the hundreds of muscles present in the body. Therefore, this organ is subject to the same methods of strengthening pertaining to all muscle tissue. During exercise, the oxygen and nutrient requirements throughout the entire body increase in demand. To address this need, the heart increases its rate of contraction, forcing more blood through the circulatory system.

When this process becomes a consistent factor over a period of time, the heart experiences an increase in strength. As the heart grows stronger, it is able to contract with more force. This causes more blood to be transported with each individual heartbeat.

Therefore, the heart is not required to contract as rapidly to provide the body with an adequate supply of blood. This is extremely beneficial, as a reduced workload for the cardiovascular system equates to increased longevity of the entire system.

Exercise provides more benefits to the circulatory system than just the heart alone. The vessels that function to transport blood such as the arteries, veins, and capillaries must provide an adequate pathway for the nutrients and oxygen vital to survival to reach their intended targets!

One of the primary ways that exercise optimizes these structures involves a form of fat known as cholesterol. While cholesterol has unfairly received a poor reputation in our society, this substance is essential for various bodily functions.

Furthermore, there are various forms of Cholesterol including the two we will break down, HDL and LDL. LDL is in fact an unwelcome passenger in the bloodstream, as it decreases the flow of blood by clogging up the interior walls of our blood vessels. HDL, however, can be thought of as the hero in this equation.

This form of cholesterol actually flushes LDL out of the cardiovascular system, allowing blood to flow unobstructed. How does this relate to exercise? Regular physical activity actually increases the concentration of HDL in the body.

Since we have already established that the cardiovascular system is a must-have for those of us who like the idea of staying alive, I think we can also agree that any disease related to this system is a bad deal.

In order to stave off these ailments, consistent exercise must not be neglected. Inactivity has long been regarded as one of the primary risk factors for heart disease. In fact, research has shown that a sedentary lifestyle exposes you to almost the same risk of dying from heart disease as smoking!

Getting enough exercise is of the utmost importance in regard to your overall physical health and function. Your body is a marvelous piece of equipment and you only get one of them!

The cardiovascular system is one of many components of this equipment that reaps enormous benefits from regular physical activity. However, without a functioning circulatory system, the rest of the body gets quickly left to the wayside. If you want to keep the flow of blood throughout your body at an optimal level of function, simply get moving!

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Balanced Meals Mean More Nutrients

Balanced Meals Mean More Nutrients. Everybody knows just how important it is to maintain a healthy diet to improve overall health. But, there’s much more to starting a healthy diet than simply eating foods that are regarded as stereotypically “healthy.”
When you’re beginning a new diet, you need to understand why your body needs specific nutrients throughout the course of the day, the role that balanced diets play in improving health, and how to add variety to your diet to stay interested.

What Your Body Needs

When most people think about diets, they place a heavy emphasis on the number of calories they’re consuming over the course of the day. However, the actual nutrients that you’re consuming are much more important than the calorie count.
That’s because your body desperately needs each of the macronutrients and micronutrients to function properly. These nutrients include:
● Carbohydrates
● Proteins
● Fats
● Vitamins
● Minerals
● Water
Think about it this way. If you’re eating the standard 2,000 calories per day, but you’re eating a diet loaded with fats and sugars, you’ll be much more likely to increase your risk of developing health conditions and gaining weight than if the diet were more balanced.
Your overall goal when it comes to consuming a more balanced diet should be to get the nutrients that your body requires without overdoing it.
Getting too much or too little of specific nutrients can cause negative health consequences that can effectively set your new diet back even further.

Why Balanced Meals are So Important

There are quite a few reasons that balanced diets are considered so important.
First of all, balanced meals contain plenty of nutrients in one meal and allow you to spread out your nutrient consumption throughout the day. Rather than getting all of your vitamin D in the morning, for example, you can get it in smaller portions throughout the day.
This can help you to maintain consistent levels of the required nutrients at all times rather than having them spike with specific meals.
Balanced meals are also much more interesting to consume. With a truly balanced meal, your meal will be stocked full of different tastes, textures, colors, and nutrients. That means you have many more options when it comes to different types of meals that you can make.

Adding Some Variety of Balanced Meals to Your Diet

In order to stick to any diet, particularly a more balanced diet, you need to add a lot of variety. There are a few reasons for that.
If you get bored of eating the same meals, day in and day out, you’ll most likely revert to your previously unhealthy diet. When you lose interest in eating because the food doesn’t appeal to you or it’s become too repetitive, then you’ll lose focus and get off track.
It also helps to keep your diet much more fun. When you’re constantly cooking new meals, trying out new ingredients, and pairing new foods, you’ll be much more interested in eating, even if it is considered a “healthy” balanced diet.
Variety also allows you to strategically select the nutrients that you’re getting with each meal. By selecting specific foods or ingredients, you can better target the nutrients that you’re lacking in and cut out on some of the nutrients that you’re getting too much of.

Final Thoughts

Before you completely revamp your current diet to eat only healthy foods, you need to take quite a few things into consideration. The most important thing you can do when trying to improve your health is by consuming more balanced diets that are loaded with a greater number of nutrients.