Most of us know that the recommended amount of cardiovascular exercise should be 30 minutes, 5-6 times per week. We know it has benefits in helping maintain a healthy weight, reducing stress and giving us a better-looking midsection. Some of us also know it can boost the body’s immune system, by increasing the circulation of natural killer cells that fight off viruses and bacteria, so we are less likely to catch the flu or a cold. Not to mention it reduces risk for stroke by 27%, diabetes by 50%, high blood pressure by 40%, mortality from breast cancer by 50%, colon cancer by 60%, Alzheimer’s disease by 40%, and decrease depression as well if not better then the best medications on the market.
Unfortunately though, for some of us finding five extra minutes a day may seem impossible. Or walking five minutes at a moderate pace seems like more work then worth it. So how does one go from nothing to 30 minutes?
Here are 7 steps to make it happen in a healthy way:
1. Set Goals – Decide what you want to accomplish with your exercise program and find a program that will help you meet your goals.
2. Get Ready – Assess your current level of fitness and understand how to exercise safely by meeting with your physician and physical therapist if needed.
3. Do what you enjoy and do it with others. You need to find activities that you enjoy and doing it with others will help you stick with it.
4. Make it a Priority – You need to hold yourself accountable to your goals and make a commitment that the time spent exercising is non-negotiable. Self-care needs to come before you can properly care for others.
5. Start Slow – Variety & Keep it simple. Many of us want to get our fitness back quickly, but realize we probably did not get out of shape quickly. Also trying to get fit faster often will lead to injury. Gradually add appropriate increase to activities as fitness improves over time. Going from 0 to 30 minutes probably needs to start with 5 minutes.
6. Log activity – This is an important step to make sure you are reaching your goals from step #1. Also it holds you accountable to make sure you are doing step #4. Lastly it helps measure that you are doing it correctly by slowly adding challenge as your fitness increases in step #5.
7. Celebrate progress – As you achieve your goals from step #1 reward your hard work and then set new goals to work toward.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Making up your mind to be Happy
“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be,” Abraham Lincoln once said.
Current research in neuroscience and psychology shows this statement to be more scientific medical fact then just a witty comment. You are more in control of our emotions and anxiety levels than you think. The negative biological effects from stress come from how you think and react to outside stimulus. People with increased anxious tendencies react in a more fearful way then a person who is able to cope in a calmer fashion.
So here are a few tips to reduce stress:
1. Research has shown that spending time with friends is good for mental health. Schedule regular time, at least one time per month, with friends to ward off chronic stress. Laughter is a key activity that has been shown to decrease cortisol, the primary stress hormone in people.
2. Positive thinking does not add to your already stressful to-do-list. It creates instant good thoughts and helps shift away from negative thinking. Negative thinking enhances anxious tendencies. It’s not as simple as “mind over matter”, but what your mind thinks of does matter. So as hard as it seems with some circumstances, make yourself look at positive things about a situation and focus more attention to them over the negatives.
Current research in neuroscience and psychology shows this statement to be more scientific medical fact then just a witty comment. You are more in control of our emotions and anxiety levels than you think. The negative biological effects from stress come from how you think and react to outside stimulus. People with increased anxious tendencies react in a more fearful way then a person who is able to cope in a calmer fashion.
So here are a few tips to reduce stress:
1. Research has shown that spending time with friends is good for mental health. Schedule regular time, at least one time per month, with friends to ward off chronic stress. Laughter is a key activity that has been shown to decrease cortisol, the primary stress hormone in people.
2. Positive thinking does not add to your already stressful to-do-list. It creates instant good thoughts and helps shift away from negative thinking. Negative thinking enhances anxious tendencies. It’s not as simple as “mind over matter”, but what your mind thinks of does matter. So as hard as it seems with some circumstances, make yourself look at positive things about a situation and focus more attention to them over the negatives.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Should exercise be work or play?
After a long days work coming home and thinking of doing more work with an exercise program is not very appealing to many of us. Coming home and playing may sound a little more fun and enjoyable. So should your exercise program be work or play? Actually a little of both, lets look at the definition of both and see why and how to get a little of both to make our exercise program enjoyable and effective for us.Play can be defined as any exercise or activity for amusement or recreation through brisk, light or changing movements or actions. Play has no inherent survival needs and is pleasurable and fun. Work, on the other hand, is an exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something. Work is often done under the stress of need, has clear goals or purposes, and is usually not much fun. Play is by definition more exploratory and open ended than work. Work is more defined and goal directed.
So lets look at why our exercise probably needs to be a little of both. If you approach your exercise with an overly serious mindset that can create inappropriate stress. You then activate a brain pattern that is not conductive to long term use as your brain and subsequent behavior will work to avoid this activity. If your exercise is fun, you have a better chance of making it productive and continuing long term. Play actual stimulates many different parts of the brain and actually enhances brain activity and growth. If your exercise is only playful and does not stress the body at all it will not physiologically, from a muscular and cardiovascular system, see as much improvement for improved health. Your body will adapt to stresses placed upon it. So small gradual stresses will allow your body to slowly and appropriately adapt and improve in its muscular and cardiovascular systems. By applying a little work with your exercise program it will help you achieve your health goals and allow you a method to measure your progress.
So if your exercise has some component of play you will more likely stick with it and create an environment that your brain will more likely allow you to continue long term. And if you apply a little work with it you can slowly challenge your muscular and cardiovascular systems to improve your overall health.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Does your expectation of recovery following an injury help predict your actual outcome?
Actually they might! Myers(1) and colleagues in 2007 did an interesting study looking at this and found, that what you think your recovery will be is a good predictor of what it actually will be. Why and how does this happen? We do not actually know, yet different theories are possible:
1. You are a very good predictor of your actual injury and your outcome.
2. Your own bias. Whatever you reported initially you will want to be self-consistent later when asked on your improvement, even if you have not improved that much.
3. If you have a higher expectation, you might be more likely to follow through with the prescribed treatment and return to regular activities.
4. The expectation itself being therapeutic, akin the placebo effects.
The last possibility is often in popular culture thought to be just “crazy fake psychological stuff”. But current neuroscience research shows this phenomenon is a normal neurobiological function of the brain and not fake at all. Our brains have an amazing ability to either up or down regulate everything we experience and do. That is why we hear of stories of wartime soldiers being significantly harmed and feel no pain. His or her brain can down regulate the pain info coming in up to 40 times more powerful than any medication we can give them. While this is an extreme example, realize your brain is always doing this to some degree. Your brain has the neurobiological ability to control information coming in and it’s response to that info. This is very real and at work with many conditions and treatments even though you don’t realize it. There is also an opposite phenomenon, if your expectation is for a negative outcome it may lead to worse symptoms.
So just expecting to get better means you will get better faster, not exactly. If you have doubts, or there are significant biological deficits, you cannot fool yourself or pretend that your expectations will get you better. So if you have doubts about your predicted outcome, seek medical advice. Research at this time cannot fully clarify if changing these expectations based on sound clinical advice leads to better outcomes, but some early research suggests this might help. So isn’t this the popular belief held by some that all you need is “mind over matter”, no. But the biological matter in your brain does matter. Bottom line, if your expectation is to get better, it probably will help. If you do not have a positive expectation, you want to seek the advice of a medical professional to help give advice to clarify expectations of your injury.
1. Myers SS, et al. Patient Expectations as Predictors of Outcome In Patients with Acute Low Back Pain. J Gen Intern Med. 2007; 23(2): 148–53.
1. You are a very good predictor of your actual injury and your outcome.
2. Your own bias. Whatever you reported initially you will want to be self-consistent later when asked on your improvement, even if you have not improved that much.
3. If you have a higher expectation, you might be more likely to follow through with the prescribed treatment and return to regular activities.
4. The expectation itself being therapeutic, akin the placebo effects.
The last possibility is often in popular culture thought to be just “crazy fake psychological stuff”. But current neuroscience research shows this phenomenon is a normal neurobiological function of the brain and not fake at all. Our brains have an amazing ability to either up or down regulate everything we experience and do. That is why we hear of stories of wartime soldiers being significantly harmed and feel no pain. His or her brain can down regulate the pain info coming in up to 40 times more powerful than any medication we can give them. While this is an extreme example, realize your brain is always doing this to some degree. Your brain has the neurobiological ability to control information coming in and it’s response to that info. This is very real and at work with many conditions and treatments even though you don’t realize it. There is also an opposite phenomenon, if your expectation is for a negative outcome it may lead to worse symptoms.
So just expecting to get better means you will get better faster, not exactly. If you have doubts, or there are significant biological deficits, you cannot fool yourself or pretend that your expectations will get you better. So if you have doubts about your predicted outcome, seek medical advice. Research at this time cannot fully clarify if changing these expectations based on sound clinical advice leads to better outcomes, but some early research suggests this might help. So isn’t this the popular belief held by some that all you need is “mind over matter”, no. But the biological matter in your brain does matter. Bottom line, if your expectation is to get better, it probably will help. If you do not have a positive expectation, you want to seek the advice of a medical professional to help give advice to clarify expectations of your injury.
1. Myers SS, et al. Patient Expectations as Predictors of Outcome In Patients with Acute Low Back Pain. J Gen Intern Med. 2007; 23(2): 148–53.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Starting off a new year
Well it has been awhile since I have been posting. Over the last 6 months I have been working on completing my post-professional Doctorate in Physical Therapy through Des Moines University. In December I finally completed all the course work and my final capstone project. Around 800 hours of study and work over the last 3 years with this endevor, but it has been well worth it. Since I have been spending most of my nights working on completing this I haven't had much extra time to post. I'm hoping to find some time in the coming year to getting back to writing and posting on various topics.
I thought I would include an article I recently did for the local newspaper:
Are all exercises created equal? With the plethora of exercises, products, and health fads in the news and hitting the market these days, it is confusing to know what the “best” exercises or products are for you. Many products or types of exercise will make claims of “scientifically proven” or “research shows” on why their type of exercise is better than another to lose weight, tone-up, live healthier and get the body you have always wanted. Unfortunately, these exaggerations or misinterpretations of scientific literature (which I like to refer to as exercise babble) are all too common in popular culture. Exercise babble aside, most research currently shows the type of exercise you do is of little importance, however it is very well proven exercising in general will make you healthier!
So after sorting through all the misinformation, here is a simple guide for picking the “best” exercises for you:
• Goal Setting: Match your exercises to your health goals. If you want to exercise for athletic competition, you will want to perform exercises that match that specific event. For the average person wanting to exercise to live a healthier life, the specifics of exercise are of less importance. For those that do no exercise, a little more of anything is all you need. Set goals and if you are unable to reach your goals, find a professional that can help you.
• Enjoy it: Find activities that you like. If your brain does not like something, you simply will not do it the rest of your life. One golden rule to live by is: Exercise should never cause pain!
• Stick with the three basics:
1. Cardiovascular (aerobic) exercise that will increase your heart rate for a period of time.
2. Strength training exercises targeting specific activities or general movements.
3. Movement activity that moves your body through full range of motion.
• Appropriate stress: The fine line is stressing the body enough for improvement to meet your goals and still enjoying the exercise. This is where many exercise routines go wrong. You apply too much stress leading to burnout or injury, or not enough stress and are unable to make positive changes to meet your goals.
Exercising should be simple and has too many benefits for healthy living not to be done. Don’t let advertisements or people confuse you with exercise babble into not wanting to exercise or spending more time or money on gimmicks you don’t need. Remember good health should be inexpensive and easy; injury and illness will be expensive and difficult.
I thought I would include an article I recently did for the local newspaper:
Are all exercises created equal? With the plethora of exercises, products, and health fads in the news and hitting the market these days, it is confusing to know what the “best” exercises or products are for you. Many products or types of exercise will make claims of “scientifically proven” or “research shows” on why their type of exercise is better than another to lose weight, tone-up, live healthier and get the body you have always wanted. Unfortunately, these exaggerations or misinterpretations of scientific literature (which I like to refer to as exercise babble) are all too common in popular culture. Exercise babble aside, most research currently shows the type of exercise you do is of little importance, however it is very well proven exercising in general will make you healthier!
So after sorting through all the misinformation, here is a simple guide for picking the “best” exercises for you:
• Goal Setting: Match your exercises to your health goals. If you want to exercise for athletic competition, you will want to perform exercises that match that specific event. For the average person wanting to exercise to live a healthier life, the specifics of exercise are of less importance. For those that do no exercise, a little more of anything is all you need. Set goals and if you are unable to reach your goals, find a professional that can help you.
• Enjoy it: Find activities that you like. If your brain does not like something, you simply will not do it the rest of your life. One golden rule to live by is: Exercise should never cause pain!
• Stick with the three basics:
1. Cardiovascular (aerobic) exercise that will increase your heart rate for a period of time.
2. Strength training exercises targeting specific activities or general movements.
3. Movement activity that moves your body through full range of motion.
• Appropriate stress: The fine line is stressing the body enough for improvement to meet your goals and still enjoying the exercise. This is where many exercise routines go wrong. You apply too much stress leading to burnout or injury, or not enough stress and are unable to make positive changes to meet your goals.
Exercising should be simple and has too many benefits for healthy living not to be done. Don’t let advertisements or people confuse you with exercise babble into not wanting to exercise or spending more time or money on gimmicks you don’t need. Remember good health should be inexpensive and easy; injury and illness will be expensive and difficult.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)