Weight Training Benefits the Heart

Most authorities recommend both endurance and resistance exercise for heart health, even for people who have recovered from heart attacks. Now a study from The University of Athens in Greece shows how resistance exercise may help prevent heart attacks (Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, February 2009). Nine healthy, untrained male volunteers performed leg presses, with eight sets of six repetitions and three-minute rest intervals. One day later their blood fat levels were lower than normal after a high-fat meal. This shows that a single bout of weight lifting can prevent a high rise in blood fats one day later. A high rise in fat or sugar after meals increases risk for heart attacks. Exercising and exercised muscles help to remove sugar and fat from the bloodstream and this effect can last as much as twenty-four hours.

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Diabetes Can Be Prevented and Cured

In 2007, 233,619 Americans died from diabetes. 60 percent of the U.S. population over 65 suffers from diabetes or pre-diabetes and most have not even been diagnosed (Diabetes Care, February 2009). Four important reports should spur you to act if you have any of the risk factors for diabetes: “Diabetes Doubles Your Chances of Suffering from Dementia” (Diabetes, January 2008); “HBA1c Test Predicts Which Diabetics Will Lose Brain Function” (Diabetes Care, February 2009) “Rigorous Workouts Lasting as Little as Three Minutes May Help Prevent Diabetes by Helping to Control Blood Sugar” (BioMed Central Endocrine Disorders, February 2009); and “Exercise Capacity Predicts Which Diabetics Are at High Risk for Dying Prematurely” (Diabetes Care, March 2009).

If you have any combination of the following risk factors, suspect that you may be diabetic and check with your doctor:
* store fat predominantly in your belly, rather than your hips
* family history of diabetes
* overweight
* exercise less than three times a week
* high blood pressure
* HDL cholesterol lower than 40 mg/dL
* triglyceride level greater than 150 mg/dL
* history of diabetes during pregnancy or birth to a 9-pound baby
* thick neck
* polycystic ovary syndrome
* dark, thick skin around neck or armpits
* history of blood vessel disease to heart, brain, or legs
* HBA1C greater than 5.8
* fasting blood sugar greater than 100
* sugar two hours after eating greater than 100
* member of a high-risk ethnic population (e.g., African-American, Hispanic/Latino- American, American Indian, Alaskan Native or Pacific Islander)

You can become non-diabetic by losing weight, exercising, avoiding refined carbohydrates, and treating vitamin D deficiency so D3 blood test is greater than 75 nmol/L. More on diagnosis and treatment of diabetes

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Heart Attack Prevention: More than Cholesterol

Seventy-two percent of patients admitted in American hospitals for their first heart attack have blood cholesterol levels in the normal range (American Heart Journal, January 28, 2009). This means that the cholesterol guidelines are missing the majority of patients who have heart attacks because either 1) the guidelines are not low enough or 2) something other than a bad LDL cholesterol is causing most heart attacks in the United States.

Many good studies support the present guidelines that everyone should get their bad LDL cholesterol below 100. However, it now appears that some other risk factor must be affecting many people who suffer heart attacks. In November 2008 I reported on the Jupiter study which showed that statin drugs caused people with normal cholesterol but with high C-reactive protein levels to suffer 54 percent fewer heart attacks, 48 percent fewer strokes, 46 percent fewer angioplasties or bypass operations and 20 percent fewer deaths from any cause than those taking placebos (NEJM, November 9, 2008). Statins are known to reduce inflammation as well as to lower LDL cholesterol. A C-reactive protein test (CRP) measures inflammation. Inflammation is caused by anything that keeps your immunity active such as chronic infections or anything that damages tissue such as smoking, having high cholesterol or high blood pressure.

I also reported a theory to explain why eating mammal meat causes inflammation and is associated with increased risk for premature death, cancers and heart attacks. Meat contains a molecule called Neu5Gc that humans do not have, so the immune system of humans attacks this protein as if it was an invading germ and eventually attacks the host itself to destroy the blood vessels and increase risk for heart attacks and strokes. On the basis of this theory I strongly recommend avoiding meat from mammals, including beef, pork and lamb. Today, the best strategy for avoiding a heart attack includes lowering LDL cholesterol by avoiding saturated and partially hydrogenated fats and refined carbohydrates; and eating plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, seeds and nuts. Reduce inflammation by treating chronic infections and high blood pressure, avoid being overweight, smoking and eating meat. Exercise regularly, and work up gradually to a program that includes some intense exercise. Your doctor may recommend statins both to lower cholesterol and to control inflammation.

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Exercise Protects against Inflammation

Researchers from Ataturk University in Turkey showed that hard exercise protects you from inflammation by raising blood levels of the antioxidants superoxide dismutase, glutathion peroxidase and glutathione S-transferase (The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, September 2008). During vigorous exercise, food exposed to oxygen is converted to energy by transferring electrons from one chemical to another. If the transferred electron ends up on hydrogen, it is converted to water and is harmless. If it ends up on oxygen, it forms free radicals that can damage your genetic material and cause cell damage. To protect you, your cells produce antioxidants. Exercise protects you from free radicals by causing your cells to produce large amounts of antioxidants.

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Greater Endurance with Aging

I’m 74 years old and ride my bicycle more than 200 miles per week, often in pace lines with younger riders. I have noticed that younger riders can easily pull away from me in short bursts, but I keep coming back on them and seem to be better able to keep up with their accelerations as the ride progresses.

The latest issue of Exercise and Sports Sciences Reviews (January, 2009) reviews the entire world’s literature to show that endurance improves as you age. Wow!

The maximal muscle contraction force occurs when you do a single muscle contraction with all your might. Even though older people are not as strong as younger ones, many studies show that they can retain maximal force after many contractions far longer than younger people can.

Here’s the theory and evidence to explain why aging improves endurance. Muscles are made up of millions of individual fibers just as a rope is made up of many different threads. Each muscle fiber is enervated by a single nerve. As you age, you lose nerves throughout your body and when you lose the nerve that enervates a specific fiber, you also lose that muscle fiber.

Muscle fibers are classified as type I endurance fibers and type II strength and speed fibers. With aging, you lose far more nerves that enervate the strength and speed fibers than those that enervate the endurance ones. So, with aging, you lose strength but you retain a greater proportion of endurance fibers.

Muscle fatigue comes from the accumulation of waste products that occurs while food is converted to energy to power your muscles. Scientists can measure fatigue by measuring the accumulation of acid (H+), Phosphate (Pi) and protonated phosphate (H2PO4) in muscle. With the same percentage of their maximal muscle force, older people accumulate far lower levels of these end products than younger people do. Therefore even though older people are weaker, they can maintain their forceful contractions far longer than younger people can and they have greater endurance. This exciting recent data will encourage me to train even harder.
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Cold or Fever: Should You Exercise?

Exercise may actually be beneficial when you have a cold. However, it's probably better to stop exercising altogether if you have a fever with aching muscles. When you exercise, your heart has to pump blood to your muscles to supply them with oxygen. It also must pump blood from your muscles to your skin where the heat is dissipated. When you have a fever, your heart has to work harder to get rid of extra heat.

You risk injury if you exercise when your muscles hurt at rest. When muscles are damaged, they release enzymes from their cells into the bloodstream and they fill with blood from broken blood vessels. One study reported markedly increased muscle damage during relatively minor exercise during an infection, with blood tests showing increases in muscle enzymes and ultrasound tests demonstrating hemorrhage into the muscles. You will not lose much conditioning if you take off a few days.

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How Exercise Preserves Brain Function

Dr. Yu-Min Kuo, of the National Cheng Kung University Medical College in Taiwan, has shown how exercise helps to preserve brain function as you age (The Journal of Applied Physiology, November 2008). Dr Kuo trained mice to run daily for five weeks on wheels at 70 percent of their capacity. They started to exercise at 8, 12 and 24 months of age. These ages are equivalent in humans to ages of 40, 60 and 90 years.

The mice that exercised every day grew 2.5 times more new brain cells than those who did not exercise, and these new nerves helped them to learn and memorize new tasks. The increase in brain cells came from increased production of signaling molecules that promote brain cell growth.

However, the mice that started exercise in early middle age (equivalent to age 40) did much better than mice that did not start exercising until later middle age (equivalent to age 60). This would indicate that the capacity of exercise to help you maintain intelligence decreases after middle age.

When you are young, your body continuously creates new brain cells. As you age, your brain loses its ability to regenerate new nerve cells. This is why you gradually lose some of your ability to remember and learn. We don’t know if Dr. Kuo’s results would be found in humans, but his study should encourage people to start exercising while young and continue throughout their lives.

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