subject: Want To Turn Back The Aging Clock? [print this page] We tend to think our health and wellness as just a throw of the genetic dice, or Lady Luck smiling on us if we can get through our adult years without a major health crisis. "Thank goodness" we say "so far so good". Although we get no guarantees in life and even fewer after death if you wish to prolong the former and delay the latter we know for sure that proper physical exercise will help do just that.
This concept is based on the reality that many of the symptoms of aging are actually symptoms of disuse, of not getting enough proper exercise to keep the human body strong and healthy. Somehow people do not believe how crucial it really is and do not understand how important their muscular system and its condition are to the state of their overall health.
Our modern day lifestyles have us sitting for a large part of the day in one form or another, in the car, at our desk, when we eat and back home on the couch or seated in front of a screen of some sort in our leisure time.
It is a sad fact that 8 out of 10 adults do not do enough proper exercise. This means they do not get to work their muscles anywhere near enough to keep the 'growth and repair' hormones flowing that keep renewing and replacing old worn out cells and tissues. Without these hormones chemicals whisper to the cells - degenerate, decay, die.
The most dramatic declines that accompany the aging process are in muscle strength which weakens the entire body and its systems. That is unless you do strength training exercise - you lose six pounds of muscle tissue per decade. That negatively changes our body composition (muscle/fat ratio) which not only saps our strength; it also lowers our metabolism (the body's engine) accelerates the aging process and pushes the body towards premature and preventable disease.
Re-building back that lost muscle tissue and holding on to it throughout the adult years is much easier than you might think. A proper strength training program performed 2-3 times each week with a bit of effort put into it can reclaim years (even decades) of lost muscle tissue and bone strength.
This has a super boosting affect on the other systems of the body, reducing blood pressure, pushing more oxygen into cells and tissues, improving ability to use glucose from the blood, increasing the metabolic rate, and giving greater protection from disease and injury. Think of it like going from a four cylinder engine to a six cylinder one.
We may wonder how physical activity can have such a powerful affect on our body. As scientists discover how the aging process works they are finding that proper exercise that takes our muscles through their paces regularly has a huge positive impact on every cell and tissue in the body.
Nothing what-so-ever to do with genes or Lady Luck, it is up to each of us to keep our body healthy with proper exercise if we wish to stay well and function properly. But how wonderful will it be when instead of you becoming 'over the hill and declining' you will be 'over the hill and picking up speed'.
