Movement As Medicine
How Exercise Can Slow Down Aging
Most people consider exercise solely in the context of weight loss. Perhaps you’re also aware that exercise offers heart and brain benefits and can improve depression and anxiety. However, many people don’t recognize the numerous other health advantages exercise poses. Engaging in regular exercise can mean the difference between getting dementia and living in a nursing home at 65 or maintaining vitality and chasing after grandchildren at age ninety.
A potent form of natural medicine, learn how simple exercise can help slow down aging in this article.
Different Types of Exercise
First, it’s important to understand the different types of exercise and their unique benefits. Engaging in multiple types of exercise on a regular basis promotes specific and favorable physiological adaptations that undoubtedly improve health, vitality and longevity.
Aerobic Training
Otherwise known as cardio, aerobic exercise boosts brain health and improves the entire cardiovascular system. Activities like walking, jogging, road cycling, swimming, hiking and the like literally help the brain create new neural pathways, help maintain nerve signaling, promote circulation and drainage and enhance lung function.
The American Heart Association recommends 150 min of moderate-intensity or 75 min of vigorous aerobic training per week to maintain health. That equates to about 30 min of moderate intensity exercise on five days of the week or 25 min of vigorous intensity exercise on three days of the week. Note that an average person would achieve about 1.5-2 miles in a half hour and only very high caliber athletes could maintain vigorous pace for 25 min at a time.
Other health and wellness sources suggest achieving 10,000 steps per day to maintain health. For the average person, this equates to walking five miles per day. This can feel daunting to those who feel like they can barely create 20 min to work out!
Interestingly, more recent research suggests that shorts bursts of cardio exercise along with natural movement mostly via walking during the day is plenty sufficient. Stay tuned to learn about the effectiveness of short bursts of energy otherwise known as high intensity interval training and why doing five HIIT sessions (aka doing 15 min on five days of the week to equal 75 min of vigorous intensity exercise) likely isn’t a great idea.
Anaerobic/Strength Training
Strength training involves working muscles against a force, be that body weight, dumbbells, bands or machines. The major benefit of resistance training is building lean body mass. Also called muscle, lean body mass is the most metabolically active type of tissue and helps you easily maintain a healthy weight.
It reduces inflammation and even assists in hormone balance. An abundance of research shows that those who continue strength training throughout life live longer and higher quality lives. Regular strength training that incorporates evidence-based progressive overload principles also helps maintain bone and joint health, which prevents falls and reduces hospital stays!
The American Heart Association recommends resistance training two days a week and exercising all major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms).
Unlike the questionable cardio recommendations, this is a very sensible recommendation. However, those who include four or more days of strength training per week will incur double the benefit, especially when paired with plenty of natural movement throughout the day.
Circuit and HIIT Training
Despite being used interchangeably, circuit and HIIT training aren’t the exact same. High intensity interval training is one type of circuit training, but not all circuit training is HIIT.
In fact, the numerous boot camps, fat blasting, sorry-to-say-it but Orange Theory classes being advertised as HIIT are actually more like stress-inducing circuit training.
True HIIT training is no longer than 20 min max, including a short 5 min warmup. Meaning, a pure HIIT session is more like eight to fifteen minutes. The bursts of effort are four to twenty seconds and rest is variable, ranging from the remainder of the minute until the next burst to one or more minutes.
Some effective HIIT exercises include: burpees, sprints, bike or elliptical sprints, kettlebell swings and exercises, jumping and plyometric movements. This type of exercise increases metabolic rate for hours after completion and is therefore most effective at improving cardiovascular health and possibly reducing neurodegenerative disease as well. However, because it is so intense, it requires ample recovery in between sessions. Thus, the majority of people can tolerate two HIIT sessions per week (75 min of HIIT per week would likely raise stress hormones enough to counteract the benefit of this exercise).
All this isn’t to say circuit training doesn’t provide benefits. Circuit training is an effective way to maintain good health. It just doesn’t lead to the high caliber physiological adaptations like HIIT, nor the same ones as pure cardio or strength training.
In a sense, circuit training slightly confuses the body, again deeming it sufficient to maintain those already in pretty good health but not the best option for those looking to create significant metabolic shifts such as weight loss, insulin sensitivity or muscle hypertrophy.
Natural Physical Activity
The most underrated, forgotten form of exercise is simply natural movement. This is typically a very attainable and sustainable way to maintain health. It keeps the brain active, improves circulation, joints, bones, muscles, mood and more and is often quite fulfilling.
Natural movement includes anything from household chores to gardening or chasing kids to having an active job or walking to the coffee shop to dance parties and cleaning the house. It doesn’t need to feel forced and can simply be an awareness, dare we suggest fun!
7 Ways Exercise is Medicine To Slow Aging
1. Helps maintain lean body mass
Lean body mass tissue burns the most calories, bolsters bones and helps prevent falls. In addition, it improves the immune system by reducing systemic inflammation. Consistent strength training is truly vital for longevity.
2. Increases circulation
It’s important to train the aerobic system consisting of the heart, lungs and blood to efficiently deliver nutrients and oxygen to muscles and organs. Sluggish circulation can cause build ups, clots, eruptions and the like. Poor cardiovascular health also greatly reduces the quality of life, making all other movement more taxing and tiring, impeding breathing and sometimes sleep and increasing the risk for mood disorders.
3. Rejuvenates the brain
All types of exercise enhance brain health and help maintain optimal function. Exercise induces creation of new neural pathways that promote memory and reduces risk of dementia, Alzheimers and Parkinsons among other chronic diseases like cancer and metabolic syndrome. If that weren’t impressive enough, exercise also increases activity in areas of the brain related to mood regulation and is (hopefully) prescribed as first line treatment.
4. Improves insulin sensitivity
Insulin resistance is common, especially amongst menopausal women. It causes systemic inflammation and makes weight loss extremely difficult, frustrating and confusing for many who feel like they’re doing everything right to no avail.
Thankfully, all kinds of exercise help maintain insulin sensitivity and reduce the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome.
Blood sugar regulation is at least one of the type five best predictors of longevity and vitality and is dependent upon maintaining insulin sensitivity.
5. Improves lymphatic drainage
Lymph nodes are only one small part of the entire lymphatic system, which is a complex system that helps maintain fluid balance by filtering blood plasma via interstitial fluid.
The important aspect to know is a healthy lymphatic system bolsters the immune system, reduces autoimmunity, prevents gut imbalances, promotes skin health and reduces systemic inflammation.
Activities that promote lymphatic drainage include: dry brushing, rebounding, facial massages, body massages, lymphatic drainage massages and drinking plenty of hydrating fluids rich in minerals like salt, potassium, magnesium and copper.
6. Bolsters mental health and mood
As has been mentioned, most types of exercise besides super stressful/intense exercise too often improves mental and emotional health. It contributes to brain mechanisms that regulate mood and has been shown to increase subjective measures of health like self confidence, efficacy, and esteem. For some, it offers fulfillment or gratitude or freedom.
Not to mention, the health benefits of engaging in outdoor and/or group physical activity. There are additional health benefits to exercising and regularly getting outdoors and to working out with friends. In fact, working out with others has been shown to increase motivation, accountability and consistency of exercise.
7. Mitigates age-related illnesses
Finally, thanks to all the above health enhancements, exercise is simply wonderful medicine for reducing the instance and/or severity of a host of chronic diseases and conditions including:
Metabolic syndrome
Type II diabetes
Autoimmune diseases
Cardiovascular disease
Stroke
Some cancers
IBS
Osteoporosis
Falls
Obesity
Menopause
So be sure to get out an exercise and set yourself on a path to living longer!
