Tag: Exercise

Got lower back pain? Exercise
It’s extraordinarily common for people to have stiff and achy backs. Rachel Fairbank reports for The New York Times that four in five Americans have lower back pain at some point in their lives. The science suggests that exercise could prevent or reduce some lower back pain.

In particular, aerobic and core work can help with lower back pain. The key is to strengthen core muscles around your spine. These muscles keep you stable and standing up. They can be found deep in your back. They also include hip muscles, quadriceps and hamstrings.

You want to ensure your spine can move in a variety of directions as well as hold you up. Pain generally comes from a muscle pull or strain because it is weak.

What should you do to strengthen your core and become more flexible?
- Move! All day long, however you can. Walk more steps. Regular exercise makes a huge difference. It doesn’t appear to matter what type of exercise you do, just that you do it. A side benefit of exercise is that it increases blood flow to the spine and makes your spine bones and cartilage stronger.
- Exercise your deep core muscles. For example, do planks, ideally on your toes, but you can start on your knees. Squats, pushups and bridges are also good exercises for your deep core muscles. Crunches and sit-ups are great, but they don’t help strengthen those deep core muscles.
- Do Pilates! You want muscular control along your spine.
- Inject some instability into your exercise routine. This will help with coordination and control. For example, balance on something that is not level.
At the end of the day, it’s less about having big muscles than about how well you can coordinate and control the muscles surrounding your spine. Reactive sports such as tennis or hiking are helpful for improving your coordination and control.

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March 1, 2022
To improve your immune response after a vaccine, exercise!
Sometimes, it seems as if exercise is a cure-all. Walking is important to speed your recovery in the hospital, among other reasons, and aerobic exercise has many other benefits. Gretchen Reynolds reports for The New York Times on a new study that finds exercise could improve the efficacy of a vaccine, be it a Covid-19 vaccine or a flu vaccine.

All kinds of exercise could help improve your immunity after a vaccine. For example, walking, biking and jogging are all helpful for raising people’s antibodies after having a vaccine.

The study measured people’s antibodies after engaging in a range of different aerobic activity for 90 minutes following a vaccine. People who exercised produced a higher degree of interferon alpha, which increases your antibodies. The researchers believe that these additional antibodies from exercising reduces people’s risk of getting really sick after a flu shot or Covid-19 vaccine. Notably, exercise did not appear to bring more side effects or reduce side effects.

The study was conducted on 70 people and needs to be expanded to a much larger cohort to learn more. Still, it appears that physical fitness and daily exercise helps strengthen our bodies to ward off illness. Exercise transforms the way immune cells in our bodies operate, for the better.

To date, data show that physical activity protects people against all sorts of mild respiratory infections. And, when people in good shape fall ill, being physically fit can reduce the seriousness of the illness.

A recent study of nearly 50,000 people with Covid-19 in California determined that the Californians who were not physically fit and had not been exercising before getting Covid-19 were around twice as likely to be hospitalized as their counterparts who were fit and active.

Don’t feel like exercising after getting a vaccine? Try moving your arm a lot before getting the shot. One recent study found that moving your arm before a vaccine also increased antibody levels and specialized immune cells.

What’s the right amount of exercise? We don’t yet know.The researchers found that 45 minutes was not enough to boost antibodies to a statistically significant degree. But, 90 minutes of exercise was. They did not measure the effects of 60 minutes of exercise.

However, it’s not clear that excessive exercise is beneficial. Some data suggest it could undermine immunity. But, we’re talking marathoners, so most of us have no need to worry about excess.

How long will exercise help with antibody levels and stronger immune responses? More research is needed. This study only measured people’s responses after one month.

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Got lower back pain? Exercise

Exercise helps strengthen your knees, even when it causes pain

A small amount of intense exercise could prolong your life

Five exercises to improve balance for safety and health

Aerobic exercise may be best medicine for your brain and body
March 1, 2022
Does exercise make you hungrier?
Gretchen Reynolds reports for The New York Times on a new study that speaks to the effects of exercise on hunger. As you might expect, you are not likely to lose weight simply by exercising moderately, if you are not otherwise active. But, you are not likely to gain weight either.

Researchers looked at how moderate exercise affects the appetite of overweight men and women between the ages of 18 and 55 who don’t tend to move their bodies. It found that while they did not eat more afterwards, even when offered “enticing” food, they did eat heartily. In short, exercise did not lead them to eat less.

The data suggest that when you begin exercising, you are not likely to lose the weight that you think you might, given the calories you burn from exercising. Our bodies do not release our fat easily or quickly. It can take months. Some earlier studies have found that exercise can decrease people’s appetites in the short-term. But others show that exercise can lead people to eat more, to have bigger appetites.

Differences in study results are to some extent a function of who the participants are. If participants are young and active, the results could easily differ.

In short, if you’re mildly overweight and take up walking or light weightlifting, you are not likely to lose weight. Study participants burned about 300 calories each time they were active. But, they ate about 1,000 calories at lunch. Still, you can take heart that exercise should not lead you to eat more and gain weight.

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November 30, 2021
Exercise helps strengthen your knees, even when it causes pain
As we age, there’s a high likelihood that we will develop knee pain. There’s also a lot of folk wisdom around what you should do to preserve your knees. Alex Hutchinson, The New York Times, dispels some of the myths and reports on what the science tells us: exercise helps strengthen your knees.

Almost half of all Americans (44.7 percent) will get osteoarthritis in their knees over time. A lot of osteoarthritis is caused by knee injuries rather than too much exercise. And, a lot of it can be reversed through exercise.

Intense exercise, in fact, can help strengthen your knees. 43 studies indicate that running does not cause lesions in your lower legs and does not destroy your knees or the cartilage around them. In fact, the cartilage that protects your bones around your knees can adapt to injury and repair itself even though it does not have a blood or nerve supply.

When you bicycle, walk or run, the cartilage in your knees squeeze, eliminating bad stuff and taking in fluids that help to strengthen and improve the cartilage. So, if you have knee problems, eliminating high impact activities actually deprives your knee cartilage of nutrients it needs to stay strong.

What to do if you get lasting knee pain or knee pain that emerges the day after a strenuous workout? You likely put too much stress on your knees. You can continue exercising but change up your routine. Exercise more frequently for shorter time periods.

If you’re thinking about skiing and have not been exercising, prepare yourself. Do some squats and lunges to keep your knees and the muscles around them strong. Check out fittoplay.org, a web site created by the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center in Norway. It offers some good exercise regimes for several dozen sports.

P.S. Supplements are not an answer to knee problems, according to the evidence. Glucosamine and chondroitin are of no proven benefit and come at a financial cost.

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November 29, 2021

Gretchen Reynolds reports for The New York Times that it might not be a good idea to ice your sore muscles. One new study of mice whose muscles were iced suggests that icing can actually do harm. Icing muscles could keep them from healing.

How has it taken us so long to discover that we should not be icing sore muscles? After all, every day exercise facilities, sports arenas and other exercise venues dispense ice packs for sore muscles. But, the study found that icing not only does not work; it could cause harm.

People like to ice their sore muscles because icing often feels good and provides some quick pain relief. It causes numbing of pain. It also keeps muscles from swelling.

Yet, when you dig deeper, you find that icing really does little to alleviate pain. It does little to help people get back into shape. It actually can slow down the healing process. It can lead to less muscle strength.

The new study simulated the effects of exercise on mice and then tested muscle recovery with and without icepacks. The researchers found that icing affects muscles at the molecular level. Those icepacks caused damage to the mice’s muscle fibers, tissue damage. Recovery was far quicker for the muscles that were not iced.

The researchers concluded that “icing retards healthy inflammatory responses.” That said, the researchers acknowledged that mice are not people, and our muscles differ to some extent. Moreover, their research involved icing of damaged muscles, not simply sore muscles. So, who knows really?

The good news: You don’t have to go looking for ice when you strain your muscles. They generally can take care of themselves!

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Coronavirus: Physical therapy can help reverse the toll of isolation

There’s a lot of focus on the disproportionately high number of older adults who contracted and died of COVID-19. There’s been far less focus on the number of older adults who have remained COVID-free but for whom isolation during the pandemic has taken a large physical toll. Judith Graham reports for Kaiser Health News on older adults who lost their strength during the pandemic; physical therapy can help reverse the toll of isolation.

For many older adults, simple tasks have become a lot harder over the last 15 months. Isolation has had serious effects on their mental and physical health. Getting out of a chair now can be difficult as well as getting into and out of a car. It can be challenging for some older adults who had been totally independent pre-pandemic to care for themselves.

There’s no data yet on the proportion of older adults who have suffered physically and mentally because of the pandemic. But, it’s pretty clear that most of them, like most people more generally, have been less active. Being confined to one’s home necessarily makes it less easy to be active.

And, some medical professionals are reporting increases in falls among older adults as well as worsening health conditions. Overall, the pandemic was not helpful in ensuring people kept healthy diets or exercised. Without exercise, muscles weaken, people lose their strength and stamina, as well as their range of motion; it becomes harder to walk and maintain balance.

Rehabilitative therapy can restore people’s physical functioning in many cases. Medicare will pay for rehabilitation at home when it is available and patients qualify. At the same time, getting up and out as much as possible is well-advised.

Some health plans are finding volunteer peer advocates to keep in touch with isolated older adults. The goal is to motivate them to move, to walk more, to appreciate the benefits of not staying put.

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Exercise can help an aging brain

We might be getting older but exercise can help our aging brains. Exercise works wonders for our mental and physical health. And, if you’re feeling as if your memory is not as good as it once was, Gretchen Reynolds reports for The New York Times on a new study showing that regular mild exercise can help.

Yes, even walking at a good clip several times a week can strengthen memory or reverse cognitive decline. The researchers studied middle-aged and older adults who showed signs of memory loss. After walking frequently for a year, their cognitive scores improved.

The researchers believe that regular exercise helps ensure that blood is flowing at a good clip to your brain. A healthy blood flow means your brain’s neurons are getting the oxygen and nutrients they need. It should have benefits for people with mild or serious memory issues.

Older people typically have less blood flow to their brains. As you age, the less you exercise, the more likely that your arteries harden

Unfortunately, it’s pretty typical for people to experience declines in the flow of blood to their brains with age. Exercise helps keep arteries from stiffening and hearts from weakening so that blood flow declines more slowly. Arteries can become less stiff from exercise. Active people, even when at rest, tend to have better memories and thought processes than people who are sedentary.

Over the course of a year, the study looked at changes in memory and thought processes of 70 people who were 55 and older and had a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment. Half of the study participants were expected to exercise more than they had been exercising–usually walking for 30 minutes five times a week–in a way that increased their heart rates. The other half were expected to engage in stretching and toning exercises without increasing their heart rates.

The group that engaged in aerobic exercise did better on executive function–planning and decision-making tests–than the group that stretched and toned. But both groups saw their memories and thinking improve some. The study did not determine that aerobic exercise would have greater beneficial effects than stretching, but the researchers assume so.

The better the blood flow to the brain, the better your recall and thinking ability.

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Coronavirus: Should you go to the gym?

At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, many gyms closed. When gyms were open, people were strongly advised not to go to minimize the risk of getting infected with COVID-19. Now that more people are vaccinated and gyms are better ventilated, should you go to the gym?

For sure, it is super important to exercise for your physical and mental health. But, there are lots of ways to exercise without going to the gym. Going to the gym continues to present risks, even if you are vaccinated.

Gretchen Reynolds reports for the New York Times that COVID-19 can spread easily in a room that is poorly ventilated. If there are several people in the room, floor fans are not going to prevent the spread. And, you are not safe even if you are six feet from a fellow gym members.

Group fitness classes are the perfect venue for the efficient spread of COVID-19. People are sweating and breathing heavily. It is hard to control the spread of an infection.

That said, if you do want to join a group fitness class, to be as safe as possible, wear a mask, keep 10 feet from others and make sure the space is well ventilated. Before attending a class, find out if the gym is limiting the number of members who can take part. Make sure that it is requiring people to wear masks. So long as there is good ventilation, the risk of contracting COVID-19 is relatively low. The risk increases the more intense and strenuous the group workout.

Keep in mind these warnings: The risk increases when people are breathing heavily. Moreover, at the gym, you have little control over the ventilation. And, you have little control over the people around you, who might remove their mask for a sustained period, if only to drink water. If they are infected, you could be at risk.

Even if you’ve been vaccinated, it is important to take precautions. Though your likelihood of contracting COVID-19 is low, you should still wear a mask and stay at least 10 feet from others to better protect yourself. That means that the distance to the next person in front, behind and on either side of you should be 10 feet. Carbon dioxide levels should not be more than 500 parts per million. If they are higher, you should open more windows and doors or leave the gym.

How would you know if a room is well-ventilated? If the room has one entrance and no windows, assume that it is not adequately ventilated. Ideally, the room should be cross-ventilated, with open doors or windows on both sides.

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Planning for outdoor cold weather activity: What you may not know

Pandemic or not, we all need to be exercising. It’s good for the mind and the body. Kelly Dinardo reports for the New York Times on what you might not know about staying warm and exercising safely outdoors in the cold.

Extreme cold demands protections. Otherwise, your blood vessels will constrict and it will be harder for blood to flow, which can put a strain on your heart. Muscles can be deprived of oxygen needed to keep you warm. And, you can get hurt more easily. Your risk of falling is also greater, as is hypothermia (a body temperature below 95 degrees) and frostbite.

What you need to know: You have white and brown fat. The white fat is what stores the calories. The brown fat is what keeps your body at its standard temperature even when it’s cold out. The energy-creating mitochondria in brown fat generates heat to keep you warm.

What to eat? Just as eating certain foods will generate more white fat, eating other foods will generate more brown fat. To generate more brown fat, you want to eat salmon, egg yolks, algae or roe, all of which have omega-3s, DHA and EPA. And, if you’re headed outdoors, take a granola bar or bag of nuts with you for extra energy.

What to drink? In cold weather, you should drink more water, even if you don’t think you need to. You lose more water when it’s cold outside. That’s why you can see your breath. And, in case you’re wondering, you also tend to urinate more. If you’ll be out for a while, bring water with you so you stay hydrated.

What to wear? Because you’re more likely to sweat out in the cold, which will make you feel cold, you want to wear clothing that keeps you dry and warm. Polypropylene and merino wool are great undergarment materials that will keep the sweat away. You need these materials for gloves, hats and socks as well. On top of that, wear something that keeps the wind off of you. Fleece or wool are good options. Hand and toe warmers can also help a lot. Stick one on your phone so it’s warm to hold outdoors.

If you’re like me, you waited too long to prepare for the cold and have struggled to buy outdoor boots and equipment. It seems that every store is sold out of key items we need to enjoy the outdoors. When your local shops are out of stock, Ebay and Etsy are often good alternatives to the major retailers.

How to keep your muscles working effectively: Your muscles are not as flexible in the cold, so it is easier to hurt yourself. Covering your nose and mouth keeps the air you breathe warmer. Walking a little slower might make movement easier. And stretch!

Returning to the warmth of the indoors: Let your lungs relax by slowing your breathing. Otherwise, you’re likely to cough a bunch. Take off your base layer of clothing to get warmer more quickly. A warm shower also helps. And, stretch again!

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A small amount of intense exercise could prolong your life

You’ve likely heard numerous times that walking at least 20 minutes a day is good for your health. But, did you know that a small amount of high-intensity exercise as little as twice a week could prolong your life? Gretchen Reynolds reports for The New York Times on the latest findings on the value of brief intense exercise.

In a multi-year study of more than 1,500 men and women in their 70’s, researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that those people who increased their heart rate regularly, for short periods of time, had a greater likelihood of living longer.

Any exercise will minimize the likelihood that older men and women will die prematurely. If that exercise includes some intense exercise, older adults are even less likely to die prematurely. And, we’re not talking major amounts of intense exercise.

Observational studies show that people who lead active lives are more likely to live longer. Small amounts of activity count. Those studies cannot establish a causal link between exercise and longer life. They simply look at the relationship between people who exercise and mortality, as compared with people who don’t exercise.

This long-term randomized controlled study set out to establish whether there was a causal link between different types of exercise and longer life. Researchers sorted several hundred older adults into three groups at different activity levels: those whose exercised twice a week, those who did something active, and those who did high-intensity exercise twice a week.

Some study participants suffered from a chronic condition, such as heart disease or cancer. Most walked or were active. Most were not seriously overweight.

For the five-year study, one group had to walk or be active for 30 minutes or so most of the week. A second group had to engage in moderate exercise two times each week for 50 minutes. A third group participated in a program of high-intensity interval training, HIIT, twice a week. They bicycled or jogged at a challenging pace for four minutes, four times, with a four-minute break in between.

A small percentage of participants died during the study. But, the people who engaged in the HIIT program were two to three percent less likely to die than the other participants. The HIIT participants also reported greater improvements in their quality of life than other participants.

The takeaway: Exercise, if you can, as regularly as you can. And, if possible, do some high-intensity exercise. It could add both years to your life and life to your years!

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