We live for cover stories like these!
The U.S. News and World Report features 5 articles on exercise and fitness.
The first is a neat “No More Excuses” article that attacks some of the most common excuses given by people who don’t exercise. Some of these are the usual suspects like “I am Too Busy” and “My Kids Get In The Way”.
But there is also a brilliant excuse, “I am Thin Already”. The response to this begins: “Wearing a size 2 is no guarantee of good health. It doesn’t mean your heart is in good shape or that you are strong enough to lift your toddler without hurting your back.” There is the real crux of the issue - fitness is a way of life for all sizes and you appearance is no indicator of your health level.
A simple Couch Potato Primer defines common terms like “Aerobics” and “Strength Training”.
Neither Rain Nor Snow Nor Breast Cancer expounds the benefits of exercise even if you have already been diagnosed with illnesses like heart disease and cancer.
Heart health provides a dramatic example. After someone has had a heart attack, regular aerobic exercise over the next few years lowers the risk of another episode by between 15 and 25 percent.
That’s reason enough to begin whatever might be your condition and while in the case of cancer, the study reports less solid evidence, it is still true that patients are able to manage the side effects of medication and therapy much betterwhen they maintain an actie lifestyle.
When Your Boss Says Jump is an article that hits a little closer to home. Just last week I wrote about how a better fitness level among employees could help reduce the cost of healthcare for all of us while also making employees more productive. This article not only mirrors much of the same thinking, but presents hard facts to support my line of reasoning:
“We are trying to do whatever we can to encourage employees to stay healthy,” says Evelyne Steward, vice president of Discovery’s LifeWorks department, whose wellness program consists of health and nutrition classes, weight-loss groups, and an on-site clinic as well as the eight-week-long Body Challenge.
…
Investing in fitness can provide an immediate return. In the first two years of the Body Challenge, the 800 or so (of 6,000) Discovery employees participating lost a collective 4,600 pounds; these and less dramatic results from across the wellness program “have had a positive impact on our health insurance costs,” says Steward.
That is some serious return on investment!
The last article, We’re Born to Walk gets back to basics - at the gene level.
More than 140 exercise-related genes are awakened if the body gets off the couch and engages in physical activity. These sleeping beauties make proteins with wide-ranging benefits to body metabolism, muscle mass, fat deposition, blood vessels, and immune function. As C. Ronald Kahn, endocrinologist and president of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, says, “If you don’t exercise, you ‘dysregulate’ your genes.”
Now we wouldn’t want to dysregulate our genes would we?
Together these articles not only answer “how” (to get exercise into our schedule) and the “what’s” (of each type of exercise), but move on to the most important “why”s.
Should be made mandatory reading for humanity.
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