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"If Exercise Works As a Cure,
Imagine How Powerful It Can Be For Stress
Prevention."
 Janelle M. Barlow, Ph.D.
President, TMI, USA.
Just three
decades ago, American physicians recommended that their
sick patients stay in bed, take it easy, and definitely
don't exercise. The thought was that energy needed to be
conserved for healing. I personally received that advice
when I was nine and put to bed with rheumatic fever. And
for the next 20 years, I diligently followed my
physician's best advice and avoided exercise like the
plague.
At the age
of 30, I realized that my life wasn't working with that
prescription, and I took up running as my exercise. This
was at the time when runners on the street still invited
attention.
Today
doctors get their patients started on exercise almost
immediately after major trauma. For example, heart
transplant patients at the Mayo Clinic are on stationary
bicycles just two days after surgery. Doctors have
discovered that women who have had mastectomies do better
with exercise. Lymph edema, which frequently happens
after breast removal, is the very painful swelling in the
hands and arms when the body has lost its lymph nodes and
thereby can't drain fluids. Exercise, it has been found,
is one of the best cures for lymph edema.
Osteoperosis
in the elderly is better managed by lifting weights.
Tufts University has elderly women lifting weights that
can be as much as 60% of their test subjects' body
weight. Exercise helps diabetics cut down on their
insulin intake, or make it possible for them to not take
insulin at all. By exercising, people with hypertension
can reduce or eliminate their high blood pressure
medication. Exercise has a strong positive effect on
lifting depression, and it helps manage arthritis pain.
Lifting weights can also help lower cholesterol (the bad
stuff, low density lipoproteins).
Obviously,
exercise helps with obesity. It also has a positive
effect on Parkinson's disease and even cancer.
How does it
work? With regard to heart disease, if your leg and arm
muscles are stronger, they help in the pumping of blood,
so the entire load doesn't have to be assumed by your
heart. For people who have lost cartilage between their
bones (osteoarthritis), building up the surrounding
muscle helps the joints avoid painful swelling. Again,
more of the burden of moving is assumed by strong
muscles.
Exercise
also creates a chemical reaction in cell receptors that
helps reduce production of the hormones adrenaline and
noradrenaline. You can take drugs that do the same thing
but then likely suffer the unpleasant side effects of
lassitude and impotence. The average hypertensive person
can expect that regular exercise three times a week can
reduce blood pressure readings by 10 points.
Aerobic
(with air) exercise also charges up your immune system's
ability to prevent disease. During exercise, T cells move
from your bones and spleen into the blood stream, where
they defend the body from bacterial and viral invaders.
People are have AIDS or are HIV positive boost their T
cell levels as a result of exercise.
And recently
an exercise scientist at the University of South Carolina
found that mice who were injected with tumor cells--and
exercised--had statistically significantly fewer number
of tumors growing in their lungs.
In spite of
all this good press for exercise, less than 20% of
Americans exercise. Even people who have had heart
attacks and are told in no uncertain terms that exercise
will keep them alive longer, still have a hard time
sticking to an exercise program. More than half simply
refuse to exercise.
If exercise
can bring us back to wellness after a major health
problem, think of what it can do for you to keep you
healthy in the first place. Obviously, it's not a one
hundred percent guarantee. Few things are in life.
Certainly the odds are in your favor for a vital,
healthy, and happy life if you put some exercise effort
into keeping your muscles toned.
For stress
prevention, there are few activities that better relieve
the pressures of daily life than exercise. Everyone I
know tells me that brisk exercise in the early evening
after a day's work changes the remembered experience of
the day. Most of the problems of the day simply vanish.
People report they sleep better, are less cranky and
suffer less anxiety.
There are
few activities in life that provide so many positive
benefits and make you feel good at the same time.
Virtually everyone I know talks about the discipline and
time it requires to exercise. But no one I know complains
about the positive benefits they enjoy from having a
regular habit of exercise.
In the words
of the Nike commercial, "Just do it."
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