You want to be more healthy, that’s not breaking news, but how we get there. That’s what you really want to know.
First of all, let’s cut to the routine stuff for review that’s important for you to be doing …
- Cancer Screening
- Eating More Fiber
- Having a Good Social Network (not Facebook, REAL people!)
- Weighing Less (use Medifast)
- Drinking Less
- Smoking Less (or quitting altogether)
- Controlling Blood Pressure and Cholesterol
While all the above are important and you shouldn’t minimize your efforts on any of them, which is the most important? What would give your health the biggest R.O.I. (Return on Investment)?
To give you an idea, let’s look at some clinical trial results:
- Knee Arthritis. Patients who did treatment for one hour a day three days a week, 47% experienced less pain in their knees.
- Dementia & Alzheimers. Reduced progression in older patients by 50%.
- Diabetes. Those at risk, 58% lowered their progression, in other words, without treatment they would have diabetes.
- Post Menopausal. 4 hours a week of treatment had a 41% decrease in risk of hip fracture.
- Anxiety. Reduced by 48%.
- Depression. 30% were relieved and as dose was increased that number jumped to 47%.
- Harvard Alumni. Following over 10,000 Harvard alumni over 12 years those who had the intervention over those who didn’t had a 23% lower risk of death.
- Fatigue. #1 treatment.
- Quality of Life. This treatment has been proven over and over that your quality of life will improve if you take the treatment.
So what is the medicine?
Exercise.
Yes exercise. Mainly just walking, not doing triathlon crazy stuff, just walking. Think about your day … mostly spent sitting, sleeping and not really being active. And what you really want to do is devote a half hour, preferably and hour to exercise. The 23 1/2 hours to better health comes from … you get to keep doing what you do for 23 1/2 hours … just give up one half hour for a better quality of life.
What you may not know is there was a recent study done with 50,000 people and what it determined is that “Low Fitness” is the strongest indicator of death. More so than smoking, hypertension, diabetes, high blood pressure or even obesity.
Now, what is most interesting about this study is most studies are backed by large pharma companies because they will have a drug for hypertension and the study will “show” that the #1 problem is hypertension so just take this pill and all will be okay. It is great to see a study that is NOT sponsored by big pharma and with the results coming back that exercise is the key … there is no “funny business” going on trying to sell a product as going on a daily walk is absolutely free.
Now, another study was done that looked primarily at obesity. If a person is obese and not exercising, that is a VERY bad combination. However, if the obese person was active, even if they weren’t losing weight, they were just active, many of the negative factors were not as prevalent in those patients.
So if exercise is the medicine, what is the proper dose? You should focus on How much, how often and how intense. The easiest way to look at this is the more exercise the better but also it should be understood that the “rate of return” diminishes after 30 minutes, which is why 30 minutes is the absolute minimum you should be exercising a day.
If you currently are not exercising at all, if you begin, you will start to see big differences in about a week. In some females, just doing an hour per day cut their risk of heart disease by half. That is reason enough to start right there. And you don’t have to do the 30 minutes all at once. You can do three 10 minute walks. To stay motivated and continuing this program of daily exercise it is best to have a friend or even go on morning and evening walks with your spouse. It is a great “planning time”. Another great motivator is a dog. Dog walkers have typically better health than non-dog walkers. At work or when you are out an about, park far away from the store entrance so you can walk. Take the stairs when you can. It is the little things that keep you active that will lead to big differences.
In Japan a study was done with 8,000 workers who would walk to work if that played any significance in blood pressure. It was found that if their walk was 10 minutes or less there was no change. 11-20 minutes blood pressure reduced by 12%. Over 21 minutes and the rate dropped by 29%.
What I hope you gain from this is being sedentary is bad for your health – really bad. What is the biggest culprit? TV. The average American watches 5 hours of TV a day … and if that number goes up to 6, that person can expect to live five years LESS! Yes, less. Just watching TV.
Walking is truly man’s best medicine.
Ask yourself this question, do you think you can limit your sitting and sleeping to just 23 1/2 hours a day?
Along with exercise, getting the proper nutrition and healthy calories is key to your overall health and fat loss. Turn to the diet that 20,000 doctors have recommended since 1980. The Medifast Diet.
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