Back to Basics topic post

Exercise

Exercise is one of the best things you can do for your mind and body. Combine all the topics discussed at Back to Basics and you can create a holistic approach to your health. If you eat, sleep, and drink well, your exercising will be far more enjoyable. Seven plus hours of quality sleep, drinking water consistently, and eating a well-balanced whole-food diet are a few health habits I am consistently trying to follow. With these intact, your workouts become dynamic.

According to the CDC adult physical activity guidelines, adults should get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity each week and 2 days of muscle-strengthening activity. The CDC guidelines for children and adolescents recommend 60 minutes or more of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity daily. Aerobic exercise includes walking, running, swimming, skating, biking, and whatever gets your body moving. Moderate exercise can be simplified as an activity where you can still hold a conversation.

With that said, the best way to reach these minimums is to start somewhere. These guidelines are a good beginning point to help protect yourself against chronic disease, but do not get discouraged if you are not there yet. Everyone is different. The perfect place to start is exactly where you are.

I am a large advocate of combining lifting and cardio. I think both are necessary to gain the largest health benefits. Walking every day is an amazing health habit to create. Even if you can run a couple of miles, building walking into your day will have long-lasting benefits in your life. The American Heart Association notes that walking is safe, low-cost, easy to stick with, and does not require special skills or equipment. This fits perfectly with the Blue Zones idea of natural movement. Health does not always need to be complicated. Sometimes it is a walk, a hill, a garden, a bike ride, or a game with people you love.

I use the CDC as a guideline to give a basic measurement. Personally, I believe people should be active an hour every day, whatever that looks like. People stress over vigorous exercise when, in reality, health and wellness can be achieved through consistent enjoyable movement. I recently finished Spark by John J. Ratey, MD. The following benefits draw heavily from his book, and I recommend reading it to better understand the benefits of exercise on the brain. There are serious advantages to truly believing in something, and the mind is a powerful tool for healing and improving health.

Brain Function

Exercise can help our brains function optimally. Our brains are able to change over time; this is better known as neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity can be simplified as the brain’s ability to change and create new connections. This means throughout our lives we possess the ability to make new memories and learn new skills.

Exercise can create new conditions for our brain to learn from and puts us in challenging situations. One way to utilize this science is to learn new movements and challenge yourself on a daily basis. In Spark, Ratey explains that exercise primes our state of mind and influences learning at the cellular level. The Back to Basics explanation is simple: exercise stimulates natural chemicals in your brain that trigger positive emotions and create potential for new synapses. Working out in the morning is a great idea because it helps the brain receive the stimulation needed to function at a high level throughout the day.

The CDC notes that some brain-health benefits happen immediately after moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, including improved cognition for children and reduced short-term feelings of anxiety for adults. Regular activity can also help keep thinking, learning, and judgment sharp as we age.

Stress And Anxiety

Stress can be a factor in chronic disease and can drain people’s energy. While exercise is technically a stressor, it builds our resilience to stress. In Spark, Ratey emphasizes the ability of exercise to help us handle future stressful situations. Think of exercise as training for stress. When exercise is done properly, our heart rate increases, body temperature rises, and breathing gets challenged. These are many of the same physical signals that happen under stress. Through exercise, we condition the body to respond instead of panic.

Exercise is also important for learning how to breathe. Nasal breathing should be the default method for lower-intensity work, while mouth breathing can be used strategically when intensity demands it. Nasal breathing calms the body and signals to the brain that we have everything under control, even if the workout is challenging.

In regard to anxiety, exercise creates similar benefits to the previously mentioned stress-reducing abilities. Reviews and meta-analyses show that physical activity can reduce anxiety symptoms, and broader evidence suggests physical activity may help protect against anxiety symptoms and disorders. On top of the neurochemical benefits, exercise is a healthy distraction from whatever may be going on in your life. People find healthy escapes from “reality” in various physical activities and sports. Once again, exercise teaches your brain and body how to react to stressful situations while helping create a more balanced internal chemistry.

Aging, Muscle, And Bone

Improving aging means delaying the decline that does not have to arrive as quickly as our current culture makes it arrive. As humans age, we lose muscle mass, bone density, and cognitive ability. Weight lifting and aerobic exercise can strengthen muscles, support bone density, and optimize brain function. In regard to bone density, women who are more susceptible to osteoporosis should prioritize strength training in addition to cardio.

Research on progressive resistance training and resistance exercise and bone health supports strength training as a promising strategy for protecting bone and muscle. Exercising also decreases the likelihood of obesity, hypertension, and heart disease. We now know that exercise has major benefits for our brain, and this extends to aging. There is a growing body of literature pointing toward exercise and its ability to support healthy brain aging and potentially reduce risk factors related to cognitive decline and dementia.

Heart And Metabolic Health

Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading killers for men and women in the United States. Inactivity and sedentary living are associated with increased cardiovascular events and premature death. They said it, not me. If it is an unarguable fact that exercise can help prevent chronic diseases like heart disease, then we as a population should be promoting physical activity regularly.

The paper Cardiovascular benefits of exercise describes how aerobic exercise improves cardiorespiratory fitness and favorably influences several cardiovascular disease risk factors. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans also emphasize that a single bout of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity can improve sleep, reduce anxiety symptoms, improve cognition, reduce blood pressure, and improve insulin sensitivity on the day it is performed. I’ll take one bout of exercise please and thank you.

Quality Of Life

There are thousands of reasons why physical activity improves quality of life. From experience, it creates a sense of accomplishment and a rush of energy. The blood gets pumping and the brain is flooded with amazing neurochemicals that have lasting benefits. In addition to the feeling, exercise can help with weight management. When cardio and strength training are combined, we can gain the largest long-term benefits: building more muscle, losing fat, protecting joints, improving insulin sensitivity, and becoming harder to kill.

Exercise is free and consistent compared to a one-time band-aid fix. This does not mean medication or medical care are bad. It means we should not ignore the free, foundational tools that make the body more capable. Exercise is not punishment. It is ownership. It is freedom. It is one of the clearest ways to remind yourself that you are not trapped inside a broken system. You can train. You can walk. You can lift. You can play. You can start where you are and build.

Solutions And Ideas

  • Recess for high schoolers. There should be an hour of the day dedicated to exercising however people want to. The school’s job should be to educate and provide opportunities.
  • Give greater benefits to workers who utilize a gym membership or participate in physical activity. Health insurance and employers should incentivize people to use gyms, clubs, walking groups, recreation centers, and local wellness resources.
  • Thirty minutes a day keeps the doctor away. Find something you enjoy and do it often. End the stigma of exercise being stressful. Start somewhere and build on it.
  • Build neighborhoods and communities where movement is normal. More sidewalks, parks, bike lanes, safe walking routes, and local gyms. Make the healthy choice the easy choice.

Resources, and links used