Health and Fitness Blog: research in exercise and health

It's official!

Exercising can improve your health and increase your life. So what?

It's nothing new.

We all know the benefits of exercising and eating healthy but The reality is how many of us do something about it.

Sadly, it is not until something drastic happens in our lives like a health scare that we then look at doing something about it.

In this article by Jonathan Myers he mentions the risks and issues of being sedentary and the adverse effect it has on your health.

**Over the past 4 decades, numerous scientific reports have examined the relationships between physical activity, physical fitness, and cardiovascular health. Expert panels, convened by organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), and the American Heart Association (AHA),^1–3 along with the 1996 US Surgeon General’s Report on Physical Activity and Health,⁴ reinforced scientific evidence linking regular physical activity to various measures of cardiovascular health. The prevailing view in these reports is that more active or fit individuals tend to develop less coronary heart disease (CHD) than their sedentary counterparts. If CHD develops in active or fit individuals, it occurs at a later age and tends to be less severe.

As many as 250 000 deaths per year in the United States are attributable to a lack of regular physical activity.

In addition, studies that followed large groups of individuals for many years have documented the protective effects of physical activity for a number of noncardiovascular chronic diseases, such as non–insulin-dependent diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis, and colon cancer.⁴ In contrast, we see a higher rate of cardiovascular events and a higher death rate in those individuals with low levels of physical fitness.^1,4 Even midlife increases in physical activity, through change in occupation or recreational activities, are associated with a decrease in mortality.⁵ Despite this evidence, however, the vast majority of adults in the United States remains effectively sedentary;

More on the article

** Exercise and Cardiovascular Health. Jonathan Myers, PhD http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/107/1/e2.full

Risks of being sedentary

The article goes on to say there are five major risks of been sedentary which obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, risk of strokes, and coronary disease are part of.

Therefore exercising and lowering your weight can reduce the risk of all of the above.

I guess another offshoot of being overweight is the fact that mobility is very restricted and sometimes joints are problematic.

Benefits of Exercise

Exercise can improve your mental health, If you're feeling stressed out, or have a few things on your mind, exercise can be very rewarding and relaxing and even help to give mental clarity.

Cardio exercise particularly helps to reduce the risk of strokes, heart attacks, coronary disease. It is true that exercising does help to lower blood pressure, hard to believe when we are running and are Red in the face and your heart is pumping away but the heart is just a muscle like the rest in our body and it needs exercise also.

The obvious one, exercising can help you shed pounds and improve your muscle tone.

Eating Healthy

If you want to look good and feel good, then eating good is also just as important.

It is far too easy to revert to processed food, quick on the go food that has way too much salt, sugar, saturated fat. The way in which we live our lives today its all fast, instant, just like technology we expect things instantly.

Increase the amount of fresh vegetables and fruit, along with seeds, fibre and fish, white meat, pulses in your diet.

Remove processed food, fried food, bread, and cakes in the first instance and then look at removing other things later on like dairy.

Which is why using a meal replacement is great, because you don't have to worry about calories, content or what's in it. You can add fruits and vegetables to your shake and just add the vishape meal replacement mix in and you are good to go.