Exercise: The magic health cure?

If you possibly can, you should be exercising. Physical fitness is a greater prediction of death than any other health measure. The fitter you are, the less likely you are to die. Physical fitness is more important than whether or not you smoke, how much you drink, or your blood pressure.

Most people have a general idea that exercise is healthy, but they are not fully aware of just how healthy it is.

There are certain basic steps we all can take towards self-improvement, and including some kind of exercise program in your weekly routine is one of them – if you know people who don’t exercise, particularly older individuals, please forward this article to them.

Heart disease: Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the Western world, ending the lives of 300,000 people per year.

Exercise cuts the risk of heart disease by 50%. It doesn’t matter whether it is walking, running, swimming, weight training, or any other form of cardiovascular exercise – every form of exercise, at any frequency and any intensity, has a beneficial effect on heart and artery health and cuts the risk of heart disease.

Cancer: Cancer is second to heart disease as the leading cause of death in the Western world. One in two people will get cancer at some point in their life and one in four will die from it.

Colon cancer is the most common form of cancer in men and in women. Exercise is known to cut rates of colon cancer by 50%. Breast cancer is the second most common form of cancer in women. Exercise cuts the rate of colon cancer by 30%. Lung, prostrate and womb cancer are also extremely common and there is evidence that exercise lowers the risk of contracting these forms of cancer as well. Exercise also prevents the recurrence of all of these types of cancer once they are in remission. The probability is that exercise reduces the incidence of all types of cancer, but those mentioned are the best researched currently.

Diabetes: Diabetes is more dangerous than many people are aware. Diabetes is a leading cause of death. Around 8% of people will die of diabetes in the Western world. Diabetes is a leading cause of limb amputations and blindness.

Taking exercise is by far the most important preventative measure against diabetes. It has been shown that exercise will cut the risk of developing diabetes by 60%. This contrasts with the leading drug prevention treatment, which cuts the risk of developing diabetes by just 30%!

Osteoporosis: Osteoporosis is the loss of density of bone cells which leads to a loss of strength in the bone. Osteoporosis effects 1 in 5 individuals. Avoiding serious osteoporosis is important as it protects against broken bones. Maintaining mobility is an essential part of remaining positive in old age. Twenty per cent of those who sustain a broken hip due to a fall will be dead within two years, and 50% will remain reliant on others for help with daily tasks or for mobility. Maintaining mobility is one of the most important things for maintaining mental health in old age.

Weight bearing exercise such as running or walking is beneficial in increasing bone density and protecting against osteoporosis. Weight training is particularly effective at increasing bone density as it involves the highest load. Make sure you train the lower body to strength the hips and legs.

Mental processing: Mental processing covers concentration span, memory tasks, learning speed, etc.

In children, exercise has been shown to have a positive influence on almost all academic activities at school. These include arithmetic, verbal reasoning, expression, short and long term memory, perception, IQ, and exam performance.

In adolescents, numerous studies have shown that academic performance increases when exercise is taken up. The occasional study has not shown a significant effect. But no study has ever shown a correlation between increased exercise and decreased academic performance. The increases in performance have been shown across reading, spelling, and mathematics. The effect on mathematics is particularly strong.

A huge number of studies have shown that exercise has a valuable role to play in maintaining brain health and functioning in older adults and protecting against dementia. Managing schedules, planning in advance, and remembering daily tasks show the greatest improvements – all of which are essential for maintaining independence in later life.

Depression: 1 in 3 individuals will experience an episode of depression that they seek help for at some point in their lives. 1 in 10 adults are currently suffering from depression. That figure goes up to 1 in 5 for the elderly. For elderly people in care homes the figure is 2 in 5. Women are 70% more likely to suffer from depression than men. 50% of suicides are attributed to depression. Suicide is 3 times as likely in men than in women.

Many people will tell you that exercise raises their mood, both immediately afterwards and in the days that follow, and this impression is backed up by studies. Two independent studies have shown that exercise serves just as well as taking antidepressants in raising mood. Exercise not only removes depressive symptoms, it also reduces the chance of depressive episodes returning. In one of the studies, over 30% of those who did not exercise had relapsed after 6 months. Among those who used exercise this figure was reduced to 7%.

The precise type and amount of exercise required for these benefits is still being determined – investigating the effect of exercise on groups of participants through studies is still a relatively young science. But it is safe to say that all of the benefits described here can be derived through regular walking or stationary cycling, activities that should be within the capabilities of most individuals.

If exercise is eased into gradually, and adequate rest is taken between work outs, then the side effects are almost zero. The risk of picking up a serious long term injury from gentle exercise like walking is practically zero. More intensive forms of exercise offer more benefits, but also increase the risk of injury if not performed with care.

So is exercise the magic health cure?

It might be, and it is certainly highly beneficial, though exercise has strong competition from meditation. The health benefits of meditation are still being investigated, but the preliminary research suggests that they are extremely good. Meditation has many benefits for all age ranges. It is particularly beneficial for those with mobility issues which make even gentle exercise difficult, such as the elderly.

Using both exercise and meditation will produce the widest range of overall health benefits.

Some useful references

Ahlskog, J. E., Geda, Y. E., Graff-Radford, N. R., & Petersen, R. C. (2011, September). Physical exercise as a preventive or disease-modifying treatment of dementia and brain aging. In Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Vol. 86, No. 9, pp. 876-884). Elsevier.

Blumenthal, J. A., Babyak, M. A., Moore, K. A., Craighead, W. E., Herman, S., Khatri, P., … & Krishnan, K. R. (1999). Effects of exercise training on older patients with major depression. Archives of internal medicine, 159(19), 2349-2356.

Blumenthal, J. A., Babyak, M. A., Doraiswamy, P. M., Watkins, L., Hoffman, B. M., Barbour, K. A., … & Sherwood, A. (2007). Exercise and pharmacotherapy in the treatment of major depressive disorder. Psychosomatic medicine, 69(7), 587.

Cadore, E. L., Pinto, R. S., Bottaro, M., & Izquierdo, M. (2014). Strength and endurance training prescription in healthy and frail elderly. Aging and disease, 5(3), 183.

Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group. (2002). Reduction in the incidence of type 2 diabetes with lifestyle intervention or metformin. The New England journal of medicine, 346(6), 393.

Erickson, K. I., Voss, M. W., Prakash, R. S., Basak, C., Szabo, A., Chaddock, L., … & Kramer, A. F. (2011). Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,108(7), 3017-3022.

Hillman, C. H., Erickson, K. I., & Kramer, A. F. (2008). Be smart, exercise your heart: exercise effects on brain and cognition. Nature reviews neuroscience,9(1), 58-65.

Hillman, C. H., Kamijo, K., & Scudder, M. (2011). A review of chronic and acute physical activity participation on neuroelectric measures of brain health and cognition during childhood. Preventive Medicine, 52, S21-S28.

Kodama, S., Saito, K., Tanaka, S., Maki, M., Yachi, Y., Asumi, M., … & Sone, H. (2009). Cardiorespiratory fitness as a quantitative predictor of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events in healthy men and women: a meta-analysis. Jama, 301(19), 2024-2035.

McEwen, B. S. (2015). Biomarkers for assessing population and individual health and disease related to stress and adaptation. Metabolism, 64(3), S2-S10.

Myers, J., Prakash, M., Froelicher, V., Do, D., Partington, S., & Atwood, J. E. (2002). Exercise capacity and mortality among men referred for exercise testing. New England Journal of Medicine, 346(11), 793-801.

Schoenfeld, T. J., & Cameron, H. A. (2015). Adult neurogenesis and mental illness. Neuropsychopharmacology, 40(1), 113-128.