The Need For Physical Activity Must You Know
The saying goes “You can get used to anything.” This is, indeed, a fortunate attribute for human beings. You can get used to heat, cold, high attitudes, heavy work. But you can get used to inactivity, as well. The latter represents the reverse side of the coin. The problem is that we are scarcely aware of what happens to our bodies when we are too inactive. Today, various sophisticated methods of study have disclosed major, and sometimes dramatic, changes in our bodies as a result of inactivity.
Your body adapts to inactivity
If we are habitually inactive, if we succumb to the philosophy of easy living, we must then pay the price in decreased body efficiency. The most extreme form of inactivity is continuous confinement to bed. In a particular study, volunteers who submitted to bed recumbency for weeks at a time reacted with skeletal decalcification, reduced blood volume, reduced muscular mass, and impaired ability to take up and transport oxygen due to reduced stroke volume and cardiac output. They also displayed a marked increase in heart rate, at rest and also when working. This latter situation is one of the most easily detected changes as a result of inactivity.
Let’s look a little further into exactly what happens when a person begins to feel the effects of prolonged inactivity. A job that would normally have been accommodated by a heart rate of 120 beats/min may, after several weeks of continuous bed rest, require 170 beats/min. The reason for this is that the body requires a given level of cardiac output, the product of stroke volume and heart rate. Reduced heart muscle strength and less efficient regulation of blood circulation will reduce the stroke volume and therefore contribute to this rise in the heart rate. After a long period of inactivity, you may feel dizzy and may even faint when standing up. Your heart must compensate for this impaired stroke volume by beating more rapidly. In such a situation, the heart muscle requires more energy and a greater blood supply with this increased heart rate.
This rapid decline in physical condition create very awkward medical problems particularly when quick rehabilitation is desired. Anyone who has had an arm or leg in a plaster cast for some time has surely observed how rapidly muscular mass, power, and mobility are reduced. In many cases, rational physical exercise during convalescence can rapidly restore the patient’s ability to work. Geriatric care would also be more effective if older people could be activated and trained to work in some way. This problem of inactivity is a severely neglected social and economic issue.
Increased exercise means decreased heart rate
Any muscular activity requiring increased oxygen uptake will also lead to a strengthening of the heart and circulation, that is, to an improved physical condition. The effect of increased activity are just the opposite of inactivity. Muscular mass, blood volume, the power of heart muscle, and even the number of blood vessels all increase with exercise. If a relatively inactive person has a heart rate at rest of 70 beats/min, exercise can reduce this rate to 60 or less. A job that previously required a 170 beat/min heart rate can be managed with a 150, 140, or less rate, depending on the intensity of the training. With a lower heart rate, the work being done by the heart is more efficient and less demanding. Unfortunately, active training is the only realistic “medicine” that can induce this beneficial effect physiologically.
Studies have been made which involved the monitoring of people’s heart rate continuously for a 24-hour period. Such recordings have shown that even moderate training ( as suggested in this book) can save some 10.000 to 20.000 heart beats per day. The actual medical consequences of this are difficult to evaluate but the figures are of great interest as an illustration of how heart work can be modified.
Cardiovascular Diseases
Cardiovascular diseases are the cause of more than every second death in most industrialized countries. Naturally, intensive research is being done to investigate the cause of these disorders and how they can be counteracted. They certainly cause personal suffering and their social and economic consequences are enormous.
Arteriosclerosis is a chronic disease characterized by a thickening and hardening of the walls of the arteries. The first traces of arteriosclerotic changes in the blood vessels can be found in many teenagers. If those changes have not reached an advanced stage, they are reversible. When well established, however the condition is much more serious. It should be pointed out that several factors, such as heredity, diet and way of life, seem to be of importance in the development of cardiovascular diseases. Individuals showing high blood pressure or obesity or a high concentration of cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood or a combination of these run a higher risk of death from cardiovascular diseases than those non-obese people with normal blood pressure and a low cholesterol and triglyceride level.
In studies published so far, it has been shown that inactive individuals run a risk of death from cardiovascular disease which is two to three times greater than run by the first heart attack is statistically two to three times greater for those who have previously been physically active than for those who have been inactive. These are, of course statistical correlations and do not prove that the degree of physical activity has actually been the sole and decisive factor. The studies were carried out on selected groups of individuals, and decisive factor. The studies were carried out on selected groups of individuals, and it is possible that certain factors that determined choice of profession or degree of activity during leisure time may also have independently given rise to some sort of prevention against cardiovascular diseases.
There are however physiological explanations as to how physical activity could be beneficial. Investigations on animals and observations of men have revealed that physical training can open up more blood vessels may develop in peripheral arteries. A narrowing , or occlusion of a vessel due to arteriosclerosis will not have the same consequences if there are other vessels that can take over the transport of blood with its necessary oxygen and nutrients to the tissue nearby the damaged vessel.
Regular physical activity will also favorably influence the level of triglycerides and possibly of cholesterol in the blood, particularly in patients with elevated blood lipid levels.
Research in this area is very complicated and it may take a hundred years or more of intensive study to demonstrate with certainly that there is or is not connection between cardiovascular diseases and habitual inactivity. The question is then whether we should wait so long for final proof or whether we should consider the preminilary results. In my opinion, there is much indirect evidence that regular physical activity, or training has a beneficial effect on the functioning of the heart and that the opportunity must be seized now. We should actively work to affect health in a positive way through a systematic improvement in physical fitness.
Disease in the spinal column rank very high on the list of common diseases. They are responsible for many days of sick leave and thus give rise to economic problems and cause much related suffering. When a load is lifted or carried, a reflex mechanism calls the trunk muscles into action to fix the rib cage and compress the abdominal contents. The intra cavitary pressures are thereby increased and aid the support of the spine. Scientific observations emphasize the important role that the trunk muscles have in supporting the spin. While flabby abdominal muscles may leave the spine exposed to injurious stress, well-developed abdominal muscles, on the other hand, are an important protective device that can prevent damaged to the spiral column and help avoid possible resultant backache.
Ranking today as one of the most frequently voiced of all complaints, chronic tiredness can stem from illness. But in many people, investigators report, it is the result of gradual deterioration of the body for jack of enough vigorous physical activity.
Continue inactivity produces muscular athropy and the individual soon becomes under muscled for his or her weight. The result that person lacks the strength and endurance to do his or her daily work easily and efficiently.
One important end result of the increased end result of the increased muscular strength and general endurance provided by exercise is an increase in the body’s capacity for carrying on normal daily activities, a pushing back of fatigue limits. Valid research indicates that a fit person uses less energy for any given movement or effort than a flabby or weak person
Aging
There is strong authoritative support for the concept that regular exercise can help prevent some degenerative diseases and slow down the physical deterioration that accompanies aging. The evidences is conclusive, individuals who consistently engage in proper physical activity have better job performance records and fewer degenerative diseases. By delaying the aging process proper exercise also prolongs your active years.
Obesity
A common misconception is that exercise does not aid in weight control. This is not the case. Research has shown that fat piles up in most people by only a few calories a day, that an excess of only 100 calories a day can produce a 10 pound gain In a year’s time and that obese people almost invariably tend to be much less active than those of normal weight and that individual weight is a factor in energy expenditure. If you are overweight, you will burn up more calories in performing exercise than a person of normal weight.
Inactivity is the most important factor explaining the frequency of “creeping” overweight in modern society. And the consensus now among medical authorities is that the most effective way to take off weight and keep it off is through a program which combines proper exercise and reasonable diet.
To summarize, certain tissues such as muscles, bone, and blood, and also a number of bodily functions can adapt to inactivity and to stress. Inactivity impairs the capacity for physical work, while a well adjusted load improves it. Exercise can provide the following benefits :
- - Increased strength, endurance, and coordination
- - Increased join flexibility
- - Reduction of minor aches, pains, stiffens, and soreness
- - Correction of remediable postural defects
- - Improvement in general appearance
- - Increased efficiency with reduced expenditure of energy in performing both physical and mental tasks
- - Improved ability to relax and to voluntarily reduce tension
- - Reduction of chronic fatigue
We are constructed for activity, we once had to run in order to survive and if we are to maintain ourselves in a state of optimum function, we must from time to time be physically active, we still have to run for our lives!
FIT TIPS
- - For your daily routine, add a little fitness perspective
- - Start each day with a stretch, bringing your muscles into activity
- - Walk every chance you get, walk to the next bus stop, walk the dog, walk to the store
- - Eat and enjoy yourself but remember to maintain your level of activity