How are you doing with your New Year’s Resolution?
Did you even make one? No?
Well TODAY is a good day to start and I’ll give you an easy one. START EXERCISING! (and if you already are, keep it up and push yourself a bit more even) According to the CDC, about a third of the population over sixty-five reports that they engage in no leisure-time activity. That is not good. Obviously, you should always check with your doctor before beginning any fitness routine, nevertheless, no matter where you are on the fitness continuum, now is a great time to start moving.
Here’s why. Almost all of this is taken from the book SPARK by Dr. John J. Ratey. (Highly recommended!)
Exercise helps with depression and other mental issues.
In October of 2000 researchers from Duke University made the New York Times with a study showing that exercise is better than sertraline (Zoloft) at treating depression. Sometimes people with panic disorder are treated with both imipramine and beta-blockers
— the first to quash the fear and the second to relax the body. The real point of understanding how these drugs work is that they provide an explanation for how exercise works. As it turns out, exercise impacts the same pathways as these medications — it puts a safety on both triggers.
A massive Dutch study of 19,288 twins and their families published in 2006 showed that exercisers are less anxious, less depressed, less neurotic, and also more socially outgoing. A Finnish study of 3,403 people in 1999 showed that those who exercise at least two to three times a week experience significantly less depression, anger, stress, and “cynical distrust” than those who exercise less or not at all.
Exercise helps with weight control and helps prevent heart disease and strokes.
Simply being overweight doubles the chances of developing dementia, and if we factor in high blood pressure and high cholesterol — symptoms that often come along with obesity — the risk increases six fold. When people retire, they figure they deserve a break after working their whole lives, and they start piling on the food. But what they don’t realize is that having dessert with every meal is no treat. Exercise, naturally, counteracts obesity on two fronts: it burns calories, and it reduces appetite. Among those over sixty-five, most suffer from hypertension; more than two-thirds are overweight; and nearly 20 percent have diabetes (which triples the chance of developing heart disease). The leading killers are heart disease, cancer, and stroke; together they account for 61 percent of all deaths in this age group. We’ve had the medical proof that exercise protects against these diseases for decades.
Exercise keeps your mind sharp.
If your brain isn’t actively growing, then it’s dying. Exercise is one of the few ways to counter the process of aging because it slows down the natural decline of the stress threshold. Ironically, the abilities we take for granted — being able to tie our shoes, unlock a door, or drive to the grocery store — rely on our highest order brain functions, such as working memory, task switching, and blocking out irrelevant information. That’s why even a trained monkey has trouble properly buttoning a shirt. Successful aging really begins
with desire, because without the desire to stay engaged and active and alive, people quickly fall into the death trap of being sedentary and solitary. One of the problems of getting older is the lack of challenges, but with exercise we can continually improve and push ourselves.
Exercise helps stem addictive behavior.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse now defines addiction as a compulsion that persists in spite of negative health and social consequences. The common denominator in substance abuse is an out-of-control reward system, which some people are born with and some people develop. In smokers, just five minutes of intense exercise can be beneficial. Nicotine is an oddball among addictive substances as it works as a stimulant and a relaxant at the same time. Exercise fights the urge to smoke because in addition to smoothly increasing dopamine it also lowers anxiety, tension, and stress levels — the physical irritability that makes people so grouchy when they’re trying to quit. Exercise can fend off cravings for fifty minutes and double or triple the interval to the next cigarette.
Exercise is directly antithetical to drug-addictive behavior. Because you need lung strength, muscle strength, mental acuity to engage in physical exercise — lots of things that drugs deprive you of.
Two practical suggestions to start.
- Don’t overdo it. You cannot get up from the couch and run a marathon. Start by walking. Then keep pushing yourself to go a little farther and farther as the weeks go by. If you are on Medicare, you can go to a gym for
- Get a fitness device. I purchased my first Apple Watch in 2016 and it has changed my life. You do not need something that expensive, however. Any wearable will do. It is a great way to keep yourself honest and
Creatures with brains move, so get off the couch and go!