cardio Archives - Complete Wellbeing

How exercise strengthens immunity

Samreedhi Goel — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 15:30:00 +0000

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that refuses to go away even after a year, our body’s immune system has gained more importance than ever. Immunity, in simple terms, is the body’s ability to protect itself from illnesses. While you are probably familiar with immunity-boosting solutions that involve diet and nutrition, you might not know that exercising in moderation on a regular basis strengthens immunity in multiple ways.

How exercise strengthens immunity

Exercise improves blood circulation

Exercise not only improves blood circulation but also promotes the white blood cells to circulate at a quicker rate. Exercise slightly raises the body temperature temporarily which helps to destroy the disease-producing bacteria and viruses.

Exercise helps to detoxify your system

Once you start exercising, it increases your waste output through sweat and urine. Exercise also improves bowel movements which flush out harmful toxins from the body.

Exercise helps to deal better with stress

Prolonged stress suppresses your immune system making you prone to repeated illness and infections. Exercise releases endorphins, the feel-good hormones, which help you deal better with stress, thus giving your immunity a big boost. So the next time you feel weighed down by worries, take a walk and feel the change in your ability to deal with things.

Exercise improves digestion

Just eating the right kind of food is not enough. Your body should be able to successfully assimilate the nutrients and put them to use as well. Once you start working out, no matter what type of exercise you practise, the intake of nutrients by your system improves which in turn makes your immune system stronger.

Cardiovascular exercise

Cardio exercises comprise walking, jogging, running, aerobic dancing, cycling, swimming and certain stop-start sports like tennis and squash. If you are someone who is constantly troubled by colds or any other minor respiratory ailments, you will be surprised that just by taking a brisk 30-minute walk daily you can bid goodbye to most of your minor ailments. Cardiovascular exercise like walking and swimming can particularly benefit people suffering from asthma as it helps to improve lung efficiency.

Weight training

Weight training enhances your metabolism and improves digestion, which is necessary for the functioning of a healthy immune system. The term weight training does not necessarily mean doing strenuous weight lifting. Lifting light to moderately heavy weights for just 20-30 minutes a week can actually rid you of several minor aches and pains by strengthening your bones, muscles and joints. It also prevents or delays the onset of conditions like osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, back pain, knee pain and joint pain. However, try your hand at weights only under professional guidance.

Exercising safely during COVID-19 pandemic

Now that you know that exercise strengthens immunity, you may plan to hit the gym soon. But you need to be extra careful during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are a few tips to make your workouts more efficient and keep yourself immune from germs and other gym bugs.

Keep yourself clean

Hygiene and cleanliness is your best defense against infection-causing microbes like the coronavirus.

Avoid touching your face

Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. Germs from various surfaces at the gym are transmitted to your hands and then to your face.

Carry your own toiletries

Carry your own stuff like your towels, soaps, water-bottles and other common things you need before, during or after workout.

Minimise the use of “shared items”

Remember that gyms equipment are used by numerous people throughout the day. Hence, it is important to have a bath after your workout.

Get adequate rest

Working out without adequate rest is counterproductive. Rest necessary for muscles to repair, rebuild and strengthen.

Eat healthy

Include 85 per cent whole grains, whole fresh foods like fruits and vegetables in their natural form daily. Eat protein-rich food as proteins help in enhancing immunity levels.

Stay hydrated

Drinking plenty of water not only cleanses your body, but also has a pivotal role in boosting immunity.

Stay away from caffeine and alcohol

These beverages not only dehydrate you, but also make you susceptible to health complications.

Get enough sleep

Sleep boosts your body’s immune response. During sleep, your body’s immune system goes into high gear protecting you from illness. Lack of sleep can reduce immune functioning making you susceptible to sickness.

Listen to your body

If you think you need rest, take it. Working out when you are tired does you more harm than good.

These simple tips will help you stay healthy and fit in the most efficient way.

IMPORTANT!

Until the pandemic is declared to be over, always wear a face mask when stepping out. Maintain a distance of six feet while interacting with office colleagues, associates and others. Wash your hands with soap and water frequently. Use a hand-sanitizer when outdoors.

If you have COVID-19 or suspect that you do, but have mild symptoms, including mild fever, cough or sore throat, you should self-quarantine right away. Those with more serious symptoms, such as high fever, chills, weakness, lethargy or shortness of breath and headaches should seek medical care immediately. It is imperative that you seek medical attention if the symptoms persist or worsen beyond 7 to 10 days.

This is an update version of an article that originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Complete Wellbeing magazine

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Why Everyone Should Do Weight Training

Akshay Chopra — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 06:30:02 +0000

Let me start off by saying that there is no better way to waste your time than to run on treadmills for hours on end. Treadmills with LCDs and other fancy equipment are not what gyms are made for, lifting weights is. The legendary American weight training guru Vince Gironda, who trained a number of top Hollywood actors and various bodybuilders in the ‘50s and ‘60s, had many ideas that were way ahead of his time. One of them was to train women with pure weights to give them the results they had been craving for after years of fruitless cardio. And now it seems that after all these decades, we have come full circle to be face to face with Gironda’s ideas, as professionals and researchers question the place of cardio and aerobics in everyday fitness regimens.

The term ‘aerobics’ has a very interesting history associated with it, which most people are unaware of. In the mid-1960s, a physician and now well-known author, Dr Kenneth Cooper gave the concept of aerobics to the world in his book The New Aerobics. The word wasn’t given a specific definition but just signified the presence of oxygen. Cooper linked the word aerobics to cardiovascular health, stating, “doing cardio would produce health benefits for the heart.” He also added, “aerobic and anaerobic are two separate systems,”—this separation is what most of us have come to believe and still do.

However, in the decades that followed, numerous research studies were done on this subject and almost all of them found the opposite to be the case. For example, in Body By Science, the authors Doug McGuff and John Little explained, “Aerobic machinery can only function through anaerobic pathways,” and that the two systems are not as separate as Dr Cooper believed them to be.

They also said that strength training, in fact, is the best way to train the heart, because it stimulates all the components of metabolism.

A very interesting point was put forward by Dr Al Sears from the Center of Health and Wellness in Florida, USA. He said that most people die from sudden heart attacks due to shock and not from a tired heart. So the best thing for most people would be to strengthen the heart in a way that it can withstand shocks, which is best done through resistance training. This is evident from the fact that all weightlifters, bodybuilders, throwers and sprinters have larger and stronger hearts compared to those of long-distance runners that are smaller and weaker. Now let’s have a look at the various reasons why aerobics doesn’t do what you always thought—and wanted—it to do.

That’s not fat you’re losing

Say, you burn 295 calories by doing an hour of cardio for seven days in a row. This would burn a total of 2065 calories in a week. Bravo, you feel good about yourself now, don’t you? Though how many calories does a pound [0.45 kilos] of fat have? Answer: over 3500 calories. So at the rate you were going, it would take you approximately 12 days to burn a pound of fat. The sad thing about this is that all those calories lost don’t just come from your stored fat, but from your muscles.

When you do cardio regularly, your body has two mechanisms which kick in…

One is a survival mechanism in which your body tries to deal with exercise stress by getting rid of all unwanted weight, which would allow it to go on for a longer time. And what does the body deem as ‘unwanted weight’? It’s your muscles. For proof, look at the body of a marathon runner and how it has adapted to the demands of his sport. While his body perceives muscle as dead weight and gets rid of it, it also stores all the body fat for future survival. This is the reason why marathon runners have a higher body fat percentage than a sprinter.

The second mechanism is the adaptation mechanism. This is the reason you stop getting results after a couple of weeks with the same amount of exercise as your body gets used to it and doesn’t burn as many calories as it once did.

Now, some might say that there are people who have lost weight from cardio but the question to ask is where was that weight lost from, body fat or muscles? This is why when an overweight person starts with excessive cardio, his fat starts hanging around his belly and arms as he loses the supporting muscle structure underneath. Competitive long distance runners are genetically gifted for such a sport and they practise that way because their sport requires it. If you want to compete in a marathon, please go ahead but just don’t take such an activity as the base for fitness.

Why muscle matters

So why shouldn’t you lose muscle mass and why is more of it better? The simple thing is that the more you have, the more effective your metabolism will be and the larger the number of calories burnt by the body at rest. And since, muscles are metabolically active, you might be glad to know that the body uses calories from your stored fat to maintain muscle mass. What this means is that you are burning fat even while you’re asleep!

The other good thing about training with weights is that you burn more calories after that kind of a workout than you would after doing cardio. So it’s not just about the calories you burn during the workout but about the calories you burn after it as well [the scientific term for this being Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption or EPOC]. After your weightlifting session, your muscles break down and they get repaired by the body as you take in proper nutrition and rest. And it is while you rest that your body takes calories from fat to help rebuild your muscles.

The dangers of cardio

It isn’t just that cardio is ineffective; it is potentially harmful, what with the systematic stress it inflicts on the body. The human body is under more stress today than at any other time in history—be it from a polluted environment, erratic lifestyles or poor eating habits. This stress causes the formation of free radicals leading to inflammation, which has been proven as the major cause of all lifestyle diseases like type-2 diabetes, hypertension, heart ailments, arthritis, brain disorders, weakening of immune system, cancer etc. Excessive cardio is one of the leading causes of the rise in cortisol, a stress hormone, which promotes fat storage, protein catabolism and ageing. Cardio workouts are also one of the main reasons for overuse injuries. Strength training, on the other hand, improves muscle mass and bone density giving you strength and balance in the joints and, at the same time, increases your metabolism, which would otherwise slow down with age.

Did you know?

The number of calories burnt as reflected on your treadmill display after a good run is not what you think it is. After you climb onto the treadmill and feed in your weight, age and other details, this information is used to calculate your BMR or basal metabolic rate, in other words, calories you burn when your body is resting and doing its basic functions. Say, an average person burns 2500 calories per day, which comes to around 105 calories per hour. So if, after an hour on the treadmill, the display shows 400 calories burnt, the actual number of calories burnt due to the run would be 400-105=295 calories. The rest you would’ve burnt regardless.

Women should lift too

If you go back in history, our grandmothers never went for a jog, nor did they do hundreds of crunches every day. However, they were still fit and active as a fiddle and ate their hearts out. The simple reason was that they were physically active the right way. By lifting buckets of water, washing clothes, carrying heavy bags for long distances, grinding wheat in a chakki [stonemill], fetching out water from wells, they were unwittingly performing heavy weight-bearing workouts.

Myths about cardio exercises

Mickey Mehta — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 06:30:59 +0000

For a majority of people, cardiovascular [cardio] workouts mean running on a treadmill, riding a stationary cycle or huffing and puffing on the elliptical machine. But there’s more to cardio than just this. Cardio exercises are activities that strengthen the heart and the lungs or the cardio-respiratory system. Any exercise, even one done with dumbbells or barbells, can condition your heart. Some simply term it as strength training. Even these exercises can raise your heart rate by about 60 per cent – 70 per cent of your recommended VO2 max [the individual’s maximal ability to use oxygen during a workout session] and can fulfil your cardio needs. There are many more myths about cardio in people’s minds, some of which I discuss below.

Cardio workouts are the only way to lose weight and to shape up

Cardiovascular exercises are the tried and tested exercise for weight loss or for burning calories. But it is the high intensity interval training [short but intense exercise sessions] that will help you burn more calories with better stimulus for the muscles. Due to the high intensity levels, the calorie burn continues even after your exercise routine is completed and as your body goes into repair mode, more calories are expended.

If you do cardio workout every day, you can eat anything you like

This is nothing but wishful thinking. It is a complete myth that you can eat or binge on fries and burgers or load up on desserts if you run/jog/cycle to burn those extra calories. To burn the kind of calories you consume, it takes more than one and half hours of intense activity such as running. Such prolonged intense activity can result in sprains, injuries and fatigue due to overtraining. And that eventually puts a stop to all planning.

Starving before cardio expedites weight loss

Any aerobic or cardio workout requires fuel, and this comes from the food you eat. Besides, starvation will cause a catabolic effect [muscle tissue is used up for energy and you end up losing lean muscle] and your energy levels plummet. Eat a small meal with complex carbohydrates, proteins or a fruit before a workout session. Empty stomach will make you lose nothing other than your stamina and health.

If you wear ankle weights while doing cardio, you burn more calories

These weights not only slow you down, but also injure you. They hardly increase calorie expenditure. It is better to focus on intensity and progression in your exercise routine than on making life difficult.

Running or jogging on the treadmill works the best to burn calories

When your body adapts to the same type of exercise or the same intensity, you reach a plateau and you end up burning lesser calories. It is better to do different exercises for better progress. While exercising, addressing the entire body as a whole is the key to overall transformation.

So, what are some facts about the treadmill? The fact is that as you get older, your joints will start to wear and tear, which may lead to arthritis, postural issues, and even heart ailments. This is where the effectiveness of using a treadmill greatly increases–it helps keep your joints strong and pain-free. Treadmills help improve your heart’s health because they:

Boosts Energy Levels: Using a treadmill is one of the best ways to help burn off calories while boosting your energy levels, helping you to stay more active and lower the risk of heart disease, which is one of the biggest health issues faced by people in most developed countries.
Helps Regulate Body Processes: Cardiovascular fitness has been proven to help lower blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol levels, and even help you lose weight. The benefits are many and it doesn’t matter what age you are at. You can start by choosing the right type of treadmill that you’ll be comfortable using. If you are a novice, start with a simple treadmill that’ll help you gain the necessary skills.
Is Easy To Use: Treadmills are affordable and easy to use, so it’s easy to see why they’re such a popular option. You’ll find fitness websites that are dedicated solely to providing information on treadmills and the benefits that they offer. You want to take a little time to do some research on the different models that are available and how they are different from each other.

There are a lot of different types of treadmills in the market that’ll give you more bang for your buck. When choosing a treadmill, it’s crucial to consider the features, price, and your fitness needs. A personal trainer may be able to provide additional information and tips that’ll make you more effective.

Exercising with weights causes weight gain

On the contrary, it is excess consumption of food that causes unhealthy weight gain, like what happens with emotional eating. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue while fat is seen as inactive, soft, bulky and unattractive. You burn more fat when muscle mass increases and this gives a leaner, more toned physique and an appearance of slimness.

Do not let these myths or even laziness deter you from vital exercises that can enrich your life. Good discipline, consistency and a positive attitude determines your fitness or wellness levels. Health is more than just physical fitness; it is an integration of mind, body and spirit. Therefore, the objective of any fitness plan must be physical, mental transformation and spiritual awareness.

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