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3 Important Things To Do To Take Care Of Your Heart
Today I’d like to spend a little time blogging about
physical exercise. I’ve been exercising for many years. It is a habit. Why do I
keep it up? Because when I exercise I feel great. My mood is good, I have lots
of energy, I SLEEP BETTER, I feel strong and good about myself. Another reason
is that when my beautiful, strong mother (who was 5’2”/110 pounds and could arm
wrestle me to the ground in about 1 second when I was trying my damndest, she
could do this when she was 83 years old!) turned 80 she began to have classic
symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease. While she did not die from AD, it got
progressively worse to where she didn’t know where she was or what she was
doing (I caught her pooping in the laundry room and knew at that very moment
she needed to be in a full time AD unit with caring people 24/7). There is
scientific evidence that people who exercise have a reduced risk of AD. I would
go out on the curb and stand on my head and wiggle my ears and scream “bla bla
bla for 30 minutes every day if I thought it would keep me from getting that
terribly emotionally and physically debilitating disease. I would eat dust or
howl at the moon or do anything to keep from getting it.
I’m not going to go into alllllll the kazillion reasons why
people should exercise. You’ve heard them all, you’ve read them all, your
doctor has probably told you some. Just the other night on the national news
they told us that obesity is a huge risk factor for cancer.
I’m a nurse. I’ve seen many people die from Cancer. I don’t
want cancer.
The American College of Sports Medicine quotes from the
Surgeon General’s Report, Physical
Activity and Health –
*Significant health benefits can be obtained by including a
moderate amount of physical activity on most, if not all, days of the week
*Additional health benefits can be gained through greater
amounts of physical activity. People who can maintain a regular regimen of
activity that is of longer duration or of more vigorous intensity are likely to
derive greater benefit.
In other words, some activity is better than none and more
activity, up to a certain point, is better than less.
So, what does that translate to in the real world?
I do some form of aerobic exercise (walking, step class,
dance class) Monday – Friday for 40-45 minutes. The first five is a
warm up time where I’m walking or whatever at a slower place. The last five is a
cool down, walking slower. During the 30 minutes that I’m working at an aerobic
intensity my heart is pumping about 150 beats/minutes. I am in my “target heart
rate zone”(THR). I use the Karvonen Method to calculate this heart rate. It is
an easy formula that you can find on-line or – if you will determine your
“resting heart rate for me “ that is, your heart rate on two separate mornings
before you get out of bed (if you
have not done anything aerobic in bed! Ha!), I’ll calculate it for you. I’ll
need your age also. Just email me at donnaraesmith@yahoo.com
with that info and I’ll figure it out.
Afterwards I stretch all the major muscles of my lower body.
I stretch my calves, hamstrings, quadriceps, hip flexors and glutes. I hold
each stretch for 5 slow breaths. For me, the stretching is a great reward. It’s
meditative and I enjoy feeling all the wonderful endorphins rushing through my
body.
Two things –
1 - Find something you like to do
2 - It is NEVER too late to become physically achieve health
benefits
OK maybe three –
If you are not in your THR zone, you will be getting some
physical activity and burning some calories but your heart and brain and
endocrine system and all the other body parts won’t be getting the intended
benefit of aerobic exercise. What does that mean? If you’re out walking your
dog at a pace that doesn’t bring your heart rate up, you cannot count that as
aerobic activity.
OK four –
If you are overweight you should increase your activity to
45 minutes of exercise per day to facilitate weight loss and prevent weight
re-gain. :*(
The good news here is once the weight is off you can cut
back if you’d like. :*)
If you already do aerobic exercise – congrats! If you don’t,
please start. Set one goal (i.e. – 2 days a week), meet that goal. Set another
goal…..etc.
Just because we’re almost geezers doesn’t mean that we can’t
be strong, healthy and beautiful.
If you are not exercising, have hypertension, diabetes or
any other significant health challenge, if you’re on medications that might
affect your THR, etc. you should check with your doc to get the OK to begin.
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Since we’re talking about hearts and we’re women –
According to Miriam Nelson in her Strong Women Strong Hearts
book–
“Women appear more likely to die after a heart attack if
they don’t show their anger, and instead react slowly to negative events,
suppressing unpleasant emotions such as agitation during stressful times.”
“Isolation may be bad for women’s hearts as well. In primate
research, being socially isolated and having limited freedom of movement was correlated
with greater heart disease among females. And female monkeys housed alone have
been found to suffer more extensive atherosclerosis than their counterparts
housed in social groups”.
(Please note: I will hold off my anger right now about using
our wonderful, hairy relatives for experimentation. I will hold off my anger
even though it might lead to heart disease. But…..I’ll save that for another
blog. I'm happy to report that we are making some progress in this area - it has been recommended that non-human primates not be used for experimentation - this is a recent development. We'll have to see what develops from the recent recommendation)
The take away from the above –
∆ Keep your
hearts strong through good exercise
∆ Learn to work
through your negative feelings in a healthy way
∆ Enjoy
companionship and love in your life
How are you doing with these three important things fellow wild women?
Much love,
Donna Rae
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