Month: February 2021

Do you have arthritis that causes your joints to ache? If you are suffering from joint pain due to arthritis, it is still important to move your body. In fact, regular exercise helps lubricate your joints and deliver oxygen and nutrients to the joint tissue to enhance joint health.

Why is movement so important for joint health? If you don’t move your body regularly, you’ll lose muscle tissue, and your joints and muscles will stiffen up and become sorer. Over time, lack of movement can lead to diminished functionality and the ability to do the things you enjoy.

Strong muscles support your joints, so keeping the joint strong is essential for managing arthritis symptoms and improving your long-term health. Plus, staying physically active will improve other facets of your health, including cardiovascular fitness and help with weight control.

What type of exercise is best if you have achy joints? It’s safest to get the okay from your physician, who knows your medical history, before starting an exercise program, but here are five exercises that most healthcare providers agree are safe for your joints.

Walking

Walking is an exercise that’s accessible to most people, and you can do it outdoors. Studies show that exercising in nature has benefits you won’t get from exercising in a gym or other indoor environment. For example, nature has a calming effect on the nervous system. Unlike running, where both feet leave the ground at the same time, walking is a low-impact exercise and the motion of swinging your legs increases joint lubrication and reduces stiffness.

If you have achy joints, use pain as your guide and don’t walk at a pace that’s uncomfortable for you. It’s safest to walk on level ground and avoid hills if you have arthritis. Make sure you’re wearing the right shoes. Invest in a pair of exercise shoes made for walking that have good support and enough padding to reduce impact on your feet and legs when your feet strike the ground. Start slowly with a 10-minute walk and gradually build up time or distance. If your joints hurt, cut back on the distance and give yourself more recovery time between walks.

Water Exercise

The Arthritis Foundation recommends water aerobics for arthritis sufferers and those with arthritis. Why? The buoyancy of the water takes the stress off your joints and makes it possible to get an effective workout safely. If you prefer, swimming laps is another way to get a safe workout for your joints. If you do it without stopping, you’ll also get cardiovascular benefits. So if you have access to a heated, indoor pool, take advantage of it. The warmer water is soothing to the joints.

Stretching Exercises

Arthritic joints benefit from gentle stretching to lengthen the muscles and reduce stiffness. With a regular stretching program, you’ll gain greater joint flexibility. That matters! When you’re more flexible, you’re better able to carry out your daily activities. Therefore, flexibility increases functionality and mobility. Another option is to join in a yoga class. According to the Arthritis Foundation, regular yoga practice can improve joint flexibility, functionality, and reduce joint pain and stiffness.

Strength Training

Everyone, including people with arthritis, needs strength training to reduce age-related muscle loss. But strength training has special benefits for those with arthritis. Strong muscles provide more support for the joint and better absorb shock. Studies show that strong quadriceps, the muscles in the front of the thigh, can improve the symptoms of knee arthritis and even slow loss of cartilage. Strong quadriceps also help stabilize the knee joint.

When training with weights, use lighter weights and higher repetitions since they’re safer for arthritic joint. To get benefits, make sure you’re fatiguing the muscles you’re working.

Aerobics Machine

Even if you can’t do high-impact exercise, there are still low-impact ways to get a cardio workout. A stationary or recumbent bike is an effective way to get a cardiovascular workout without impacting on your joints. Increase the challenge by doing interval cycling workouts. Cycle at a leisurely rate for 30 seconds and then go all out for 30 seconds. Keep alternating back and forth. An elliptical machine is another alternative that’s easy on the joints. If you keep the platform level without adding an incline, walking on a treadmill is a safe way to boost your heart rate for cardiovascular benefits.

Bottom Line

Before starting an exercise program with arthritis, check with your physician first, but here are the best options if you have arthritis. Prior to doing any form of exercise, do a 10-minute dynamic warm-up to increase your core body temperature and ensure that your muscles are ready to work. Do a slow cooldown at the end and gentle stretching.

Arthritis Foundation. “Yoga Benefits for Arthritis”

MedPageToday.com. “Stronger Quads May Benefit Arthritic Knees”

Amin S, et al “Quadriceps strength and the risk of cartilage loss and symptom progression in knee osteoarthritis” Arthritis & Rheum 2009; 60(1): 189-198.

 

You may have heard that exercise alone will help you slim down and will give you a leg up on reaching your ideal body weight. Yet this is only a half-truth perpetuated by people who want to sell you an exercise program or gym membership. Never underestimate the phenomenal health benefits of exercise, but don’t count on it alone to get you to your goal weight. Still, you need exercise for health reasons – to enhance cardiovascular health and to build muscle strength and preserve muscle mass as you age and for weight loss maintenance once you lose the weight.

Plus, research shows staying physically active lowers the risk of a number of health problems that shorten lifespan, including cardiovascular disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and some forms of cancer and that’s something to celebrate. In fact, some experts believe exercise is the best medicine that pharmaceutical companies can’t patent.  So don’t trade in your exercise shoes.

Despite the incredible health benefits of exercise, focusing on your what you eat is the best bet for fat loss. The best approach is not dieting, a bad word and bad concept, but upgrading the quality of what you eat and eating more mindfully. Diets are about deprivation and abstaining from the foods you enjoy, and that’s not sustainable, even if you’re trying to slim down. Diets don’t work for long-term weight control, and they only bring on frustration and enhance cravings.

Forget the entire concept of dieting and concentrate on upgrade the quality of what you eat. Remove ultra-processed fare from your fridge and cabinets and taper back the among of sugar in your diet. Sugar is empty calories with no nutrition, and it has a negative effect on your metabolic health. What you eat should make you feel healthy, vital, and energetic, not frustrated and deprived.

You Still Need Exercise Though

Why does exercise alone not lead to significant weight loss for most people? Research shows people compensate for the calories they burn through exercise by eating more. They’re guilty of overestimating how many calories they burn during an exercise session and eat based on these misconceptions. You might think you can justify eating something rich and sweet because you sweated so much, but the calorie burn was less than you thought. In fact, studies show people overestimate the calorie they burned during a workout by around 30%. A 45 minutes sweat session isn’t enough to justify that rich dessert!

If you try to overexercise to lose weight, your body may respond by scaling back your resting metabolic rate. It does this because it senses you’re burning so much energy that it needs to conserve what you have, especially if you restrict calories too.  When you expend too much energy, your body also has subtle ways of slowing you down. You might unconsciously move less without being aware of it. To make matters worse, you might get an appetite boost because your body senses low fuel stores and wants you to eat. Of course, this happens at a level beyond your conscious awareness.

The Bottom Line

Keep exercising! Your body needs it but be mindful of what you’re eating. It matters the most for weight control. It’s not just calories either. The composition of what you eat affects hormones like insulin that affect how much fat you store and where. For example, a high insulin level increases fat storage around the waistline and abdomen. When you eat ultra-processed carbohydrates and sugar, that raises insulin, and you end up with fat around the midline. When choosing what to eat, remember that a brownie affects your insulin level differently than a plate of greens, even if they’re equal in calories.

But there’s more good news about exercise. Not only does working out improve cardiovascular health and build muscle strength, it’s the best lifestyle factor for maintaining the weight you lose. Studies of people who lose at least 10% of their body weight show that exercise is the most important factor for maintaining the weight loss. That matters since 80% of people who lose significant weight gain it all back and sometimes more. So, nutrition reigns supreme for weight control, but you still need exercise.

References:

Prog Cardiovasc Dis. 2014 Jan-Feb; 56(4): 441-447.Published online 2013 Oct 11. doi: 10.1016/j.pcad.2013.09.012.

Villareal DT, Chode S, Parimi N et al. Weight loss, exercise, or both and physical function in obese older adults. N Engl J Med. 2011;364(13):1218-1229. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1008234.

WebMD.com. “Diet vs. Exercise: The Truth About Weight Loss”

When you exercise, your body pumps more oxygen to your muscles. To accomplish this, your heart rate must increase the resistance to blood flow in your vessels must drop. A normal heartbeat at rest is between 60 and 100 times per minute; however, during an intense workout, the rate can more than double.

After completing working out, your heart rate gradually drops. This is because your heart and muscles no longer need to work as hard as oxygen demands slowly drop. What you might not realize is a heart rate that slows faster after a workout may be a measurable marker of heart health.

What if Your Heart Rate Recovery is Slow?

Now that you know why your heart speeds up, how does it do so? It gets help from key hormones, particularly two called epinephrine or norepinephrine, the so-called “fight or flight” hormones. When levels of these key hormones rise, your heart beats faster, your blood pressure increases, and blood flow to your muscles surge.

How quickly your heart muscle recovers to a more “relaxed” state after a workout is a marker of cardiovascular health. If you have good cardiovascular fitness, your heart rate will drop faster once your workout ends than someone with poor cardiovascular fitness or an unhealthy heart.

If your heart recovers slowly after a workout, you have a slow recovery heart rate. Why does this matter? Studies show a slow recovery heart rate is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular death and a higher risk of other health problems, including metabolic syndrome, a precursor to type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, your heart rate should drop at least 12 beats within the first minute after exercise. If it falls more slowly and the drop is less than 12 beats after resting for one minute, heart rate recovery is slow, and studies link a slow recovery heart rate with a higher risk of death.

How to Measure Heart Rate Recovery

There’s a simple way to measure your heart rate recovery at home and some fitness centers use this technique All you’ll need is a step or platform about 12 inches high to step on to. Here’s how to measure your recovery heart rate:

• Step up and down off the box or platform for 3 minutes. Keep the pace brisk.
• At the end of 3 minutes, count your pulse rate at your neck for 15 seconds and multiply the value by 4 to get your heart rate per minute.
• Stop exercising and stand still for 1 minute. Then recheck your pulse rate again in the same manner.
• Subtract the two values to get your heart rate recovery.

Is less than 12, it’s a warning that you may be at greater risk for cardiovascular mortality. If your heart rate recovery is slow, let your doctor know, but you can improve your heart rate recovery over time through cardiovascular exercise.

Some factors can give you a falsely low reading. One example is not sleeping well the night before. Also, having a fever, drinking alcohol, smoking, or being dehydrated can cause a falsely slow recovery heart rate. Certain medications and health problems, such as an overactive thyroid can also affect recovery heart rate.

If your heart rate drops 20 beats or more after one minute, you have a fast heart rate recovery and a low risk of cardiovascular death. That’s good news! Most people fall in the mid-range, around 15 to 17. If you have a slow heart rate recovery, mention it to your doctor and then work on improving the health of your heart. Recheck it again 3 to 6 months after the first one to see whether it’s improved. As you get more physically fit, your heart rate recovery should improve, and your heart rate will drop faster after a workout.

The Bottom Line

Heart rate recovery is a simple test you can do at home that provides information about how heart health and physical fitness. It doesn’t replace the need to see your doctor regularly and monitor other markers of heart health such as blood pressure, blood sugar, and lipids. Keep doing those things too!

References:

Merck Manual. 18th edition.

N Engl J Med 1999; 341:1351-1357, DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199910283411804.

VeryWellFit.com. “How to Use Recovery Heart Rate for Fitness and Health”

Journal of the American Heart Association. May 5, 2017. Vol 6, Issue 5.

Exp Physiol. 2010; 95:431-440.

Journal of the American Heart Association. February 18, 2020. Vol 9, Issue 4.

J Korean Med Sci. 2006 Aug; 21(4): 621-626.