Posts Tagged ‘Physical exercise’
Strength Training for Cardiovascular Health
Image via Wikipedia
One of the issues seniors face is diminishing muscle strength. Seniors who want to take preemptive steps to maintain the strength of the muscles need to hear some good news. Recent studies about the difference in strength between younger adults and seniors show that 70 percent of the muscle loss is due to lack of physical activity and absence of strength training. Only 30 percent of the loss of muscle strength is due to aging. Seniors need strong muscles in order to live a full senior life. The good news is that seniors can maintain or regain their muscle strength by engaging in strength training exercises. Strength training fosters weight control, bone health, and improves cognition. By reducing body fat with strength training seniors lower their risk of diabetes. Improving muscle strength seniors reduce their risk of injury from falls and other injuries. Seniors need adequate muscle strength in order to exercise at a rate that promotes cardiovascular health. Strength training helps build up the muscle strength of seniors so that they can easily participate in cardiovascular exercise. Seniors can engage in strength training at home or in a gym. This training needs to be tailored to the starting condition of each individual senior. For example, seniors can begin slowly at home with simple exercises such as sit-ups and push-ups combined with the use of resistance tubing. As their strength builds up they can include light weights such as barbells. Finally they can advance to performing strength training at a gym.
Seniors Can Reduce Risk of Colorectal Cancers
- Image by Transportation for America via Flickr
For seniors who are concerned about taking affordable, preemptive steps to promote their senior health, here are five steps that, if taken, can greatly reduce the risk of contracting colorectal cancer. The results are from a study in Europe that were recently published in a medial journal in Britain. The researchers found that folks who lost weight, limited their consumption of alcoholic beverages, stopped smoking, maintained a healthy diet and exercised about 30 minutes a day reduced their risk of colorectal cancer by more than 20%. This was the first study that combined all five factors, because earlier studies had considered these factors individually in isolation from the others. It is not certain why following these recommendations helps to prevent colorectal cancer, but suffering from high insulin and diabetes are known risk factors for colorectal cancer. Lack of physical activity and obesity lead to high insulin states, that typically lead to the growth of cancer cells. The European study found that women who lost weight sufficient to reduce their waist size to 35 inches and men to reduce their waist size to 40 inches were in the healthy zone. In terms of alcohol consumption men who consumed no more that 14 drinks per week and women no more than 7 were also remained in the healthy zone. In summary seniors who want to take preemptive aging steps to foster their senior health would be well advised to implement these five lifestyle recommendations.
Will Tart Cherry Juice Make Exercise Easier?
- Image by .Larry Page via Flickr
One of the pillars supporting healthy living is exercise for seniors, but many seniors find difficulty practicing the rule of frequent exercise. When folks were younger they found that they could exercise regularly without unpleasant consequences such as aching muscles. Muscles that are still aching from the last period of exercise tend to weaken the will to initiate a new round of needed exercise. A report this year from a meeting on sports medicine provides some very encouraging information for seniors in terms of a means to take the edge off aching muscles after exercising.
In two different tests folks who exercised by running and others that engaged in arm exercises were given tart cherry juice or a placebo for several weeks before their event. The exercisers who received the tart cherry juice reported significantly less pain following their long distance running event. The other group that engaged in arm exercises suffered from fibromyalgia showed better muscle strength and less pain after their exercise. The pain reduction due to consuming tart cherry juice could well be due to the well known anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects of tart cherries. Seniors who consume tart cherry juice before exercising may find that it reduces their muscle pain after exercising. Taking the edge off post exercise muscle pain will foster regular exercise and promote senior health.
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Keep Your Muscles after 65!
- Image via Wikipedia
As adults grow older they lose the muscles that they had when they were younger, because their muscles shrink. Previous research has shown that seniors are less efficient at building muscle from food compared with the way they did when they were younger. Smaller, weaker muscles means less strength, but they also increase the probability of falling injuries that have a very negative impact on senior living. If that were not bad enough, recent research in England at the University of Nottingham has discovered more bad news that hinders seniors’ muscle building efforts. It turns out that the mechanism that blocks the breakdown of muscles does not work very effectively in folks over 65 years of age.
This discovery was made during a comparison study between 25-year-olds and folks in their late 60′s. The young people’s muscles were able to stop the muscle breakdown and the older folks’ muscles were not. The researchers also discovered that the older folks had a lower blood flow in their legs than the younger folks. One conclusion that the researchers drew from this finding was that the rate at which nutrients and hormones are supplied is lower for the older folks which may explain the cause of the declining muscles. The researchers performed a follow-up study in which the older folks performed at least three exercise sessions a week for 20 weeks. Instituting this weight training exercise for seniors was enough to increase the blood flow to the legs of the seniors until it was identical to the younger group. By increasing the blood flow to the legs of the seniors their muscle wasting was reversed.
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