Your best health over 50

Aerobic exercise

Make exercise part of your daily routine, but mix it up. Go for a brisk walk, get on your bike and use Toronto’s bike lanes, or swim some laps in the pool. If you have a gym nearby, try a group class or use one of the cardiovascular machines, like the elliptical trainers, there.

Aerobic exercise strengthens your heart, helps prevent the build up of cholesterol and improves the functioning of the liver, pancreas and most vital organs.

Aerobic exercise assists in the delay the onset of Type II diabetes – a tragic epidemic in North America – and also helps the body to send extra glucose and oxygen to the brain. This in turn stimulates the nerve cells producing better brain function, which will help increase alertness and attention. Forgetful lately? All this helps improve memory function too.

Aim for four to six days a week when you’re doing something aerobic – a half-hour walk, for example. Vary what you do, and increase the level of activity slowly. Do as much as possible, as often as possible, to maintain the benefits.

Resistance Training

Lifting weights is not just for body builders or for young males. The benefits are huge for over 50s.

A faster metabolism brings you nifty advantages. Basically, you have a greater need for calories – so you can also focus on better nutrition. High metabolisms also help develop the ability to break down adipose tissue (OK, stored body fat) as a source of energy.

Did you know that 1lb of lean muscle is more metabolically active than 1lb of fat? One pound of muscle uses 30 to 50 extra calories a day just for being there!

The body produces HGH (human growth hormone) throughout our lives. HGH has a vital role in cell reproduction, growth, repair and the ability to develop and maintain our muscles, strength and stamina. Production of HGH slows down as we age, causing the body to regress. Put simply that means less growth and repair, and the body breaks down lean muscle mass – muscle that you need to rev up your metabolism. The good news is that resistance training stimulates the production of HGH.

So with all this new HGH present how do we use it? It helps us repair and grow muscle after exercise, this will in turn give us a higher percentage of lean muscle mass, which increases the body’s need for calories by speeding up your metabolism.

(7 votes, average: 4.86 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Pages: 1 2 3