There are so many ways that you can keep your body healthy, happy and in great shape.
When you are exercising, you Stretch, Strengthen, Breathe, and Balance. All good ingredients to slow aging.
Regular exercise provides a myriad of health benefits in older adults, including improvements in blood pressure, diabetes, lipid profile, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, and neurocognitive function. Regular physical activity is also associated with decreased mortality and age-related morbidity in older adults. Despite this, up to 75 percent of older Americans are insufficiently active to achieve these health benefits. Exercise to slow aging!
http://www.aafp.org/afp/2002/0201/p419.html
The main reason metabolism slows with age is based upon your lean body mass. When you’re younger you move more, and as people get older they move less. Therefore the lean body mass of an individual will decrease unless they continue exercising or begin to exercise more. Also, if you have very little lean muscle mass then you will not burn as many calories in a day as someone who has lots of muscle mass.
Human studies on aging and exercise have found an association between physical activity and maintenance of cognitive ability in older people.
Regular exercise improves balance in older people who have arthritis of the knee. Both aerobic and weight training improved balance in a 1-1/2 year study, while the non-exercising control group saw their balance deteriorate. (Journal of American Geriatrics Society, 2000, 48 (2), 131)
Walking at least 45 minutes 3 times a week improves oxygen flow to the brain, and thus improves concentration and reaction time of seniors, according to a recent study in the journal Nature. The study used walking, but other aerobic exercise should work, too.
http://exercise.lifetips.com/cat/7283/aging-and-exercise/index.html
Exercise can help arthritic patients by increasing strength and mobility.
Aging appears neither to impair the ability to improve muscle strength nor prevent muscle growth.
Improvements in fitness and oxygen consumption with training are similar for younger or older men and women. Though, an older person will generally start at a lower level and peak at a lower level than a younger person. Exercise to slow aging!
http://www.free-online-health.com/exercise-elderly.htm
Walking is a gentle, low-impact exercise that can ease you into a higher level of fitness and health. Walking is a form of exercise accessible to just about everybody. It’s safe, simple and doesn’t require practice. And the health benefits are many. Here’s more about why walking is good for you, and how to get started with a walking program.
Benefits of walking
Walking, like other exercise, can help you achieve a number of important health benefits. Walking can help you:
- Lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol)
- Raise high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (the “good” cholesterol)
- Lower your blood pressure
- Reduce your risk of or manage type 2 diabetes
- Manage your weight
- Improve your mood
- Stay strong and fit
All it takes to reap these benefits is a routine of brisk walking. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. And you can forget the “no pain, no gain” talk. Research shows that regular, brisk walking can reduce the risk of heart attack by the same amount as more vigorous exercise, such as jogging. Exercise to slow aging!
“Walking is man’s best medicine.”
-Hippocrates
Hippocrates must have been a smart guy! There’s a wealth of research to prove that walking is good for you and the results are impressive: major reductions in both diabetes and heart disease, decreases in high blood pressure, increases in bone density, and more all follow regular walking exercise.
What are the top 10 reasons to walk?
- Walking prevents type 2 diabetes.The Diabetes Prevention Program showed that walking 150 minutes per week and losing just 7% of your body weight (12-15 pounds) can reduce your risk of diabetes by 58%.
- Walking strengthens your heart if you’re male. In one study, mortality rates among retired men who walked less than one mile per day were nearly twice that among those who walked more than two miles per day.
- Walking strengthens your heart if you’re female. Women in the Nurse’s Health Study (72,488 female nurses) who walked three hours or more per week reduced their risk of a heart attack or other coronary event by 35% compared with women who did not walk.
- Walking is good for your brain. In a study on walking and cognitive function, researchers found that women who walked the equivalent of an easy pace at least 1.5 hours per week had significantly better cognitive function and less cognitive decline than women who walked less than 40 minutes per week. Think about that!
- Walking is good for your bones. Research shows that postmenopausal women who walk approximately one mile each day have higher whole-body bone density than women who walk shorter distances, and walking is also effective in slowing the rate of bone loss from the legs.
- Walking helps alleviate symptoms of depression. Walking for 30 minutes, three to five times per week for 12 weeks reduced symptoms of depression as measured with a standard depression questionnaire by 47%.
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Walking reduces the risk of breast and colon cancer. Women who performed the equivalent of one hour and 15 minutes to two and a half hours per week of brisk walking had an 18% decreased risk of breast cancer compared with inactive women. Many studies have shown that exercise can prevent colon cancer, and even if an individual person develops colon cancer, the benefits of exercise appear to continue both by increasing quality of life and reducing mortality.
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Walking improves fitness. Walking just three times a week for 30 minutes can significantly increase cardio-respiratory fitness.
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Walking in short bouts improves fitness, too! A study of sedentary women showed that short bouts of brisk walking (three 10-minute walks per day) resulted in similar improvements in fitness and were at least as effective in decreasing body fatness as long bouts (one 30-minute walk per day).
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Walking improves physical function. Research shows that walking improves fitness and physical function and prevents physical disability in older persons.