Inside Aerobics

Overview: A detailed explanation of the various components of Wisercise and how they work together to provide a life-long urban health fitness training system.

Mindfulness: Harness the Power of The Mind-Body Connection with the practice of Mindfulness. Free yourself from mechanical, conditioned ways of thinking and living which may be harmful to yourself or others.

Breathing: Ageing and the pressures of modern daily life will cause you to change the way you breathe. This article introduces a technique of deep breathing called the Complete Breath and highlights its role in maintaining good health and quality of life.

Posture: Many of the muscles used for breathing are also used for postural alignment. Good posture will improve your breathing and balance in addition to preventing falls and injuries. Learn how to fine-tune your posture for best results.

Stretching: Stretching is an extremely versatile and accomodating form of movement used by physiotherapists, athletes, ballet dancers, pugilists and the military. It is not only a bookend to vigorous exercise but a beneficial exercise in itself!

Aerobic Exercise: Add Years to Life & Life to Years with a traditional, easy-to-do exercise form that positively affects the years of life after age 40, lengthening life while postponing and compacting end-of-life disability.

Inside Aerobics: Find out what happens to you when you exercise aerobically and the benefits to your heart, brain and vital organs.

Best Aerobic Exercise: Researchers have found Walking to be the best aerobic exercise for daily health and wellness maintenance due to its accessibility, lowest injury rate of any exercise form and ability to reduce risk of premature death, dementia and other diseases.

Quickstep Overview: An overview of the Quickstep aerobic briskwalking technique. What is it? How can it benefit you?

Inside Quickstep: An inside look at Quickstep. Find out about Walking Mechanics, Tensegrity, Core Muscles and Balance and how to make these work together to make Quickstep go.

Aerobic Exercise
The Elixir Of Youth

Experts recognise that people are motivated by rewards.

It is for this reason that they focus their attention on proving the scientific benefits of exercise.

In a landmark study 1 researchers followed the change in aerobic capacity of more than 800 men and women aged 21 to 87 over a period of nearly eight years.

The results showed that while aerobic capacity declined each decade in both men and women (and at a much greater rate in the older age group), performance of regular aerobic exercise throughout the lifespan will lengthen life and postpone and compact end-of-life disability.

In other words:

A modest increase of just 15% to 25% in
aerobic capacity would be equivalent to being 10-20 years younger!

“Given the importance of aerobic capacity in activities of daily living, efforts to increase and maintain higher levels of VO2 max (in addition to strength training in older adults) would likely improve their ability to live independently with a higher quality of life.”

"Higher habitual levels of aerobic activity are accompanied by higher peak V̇02 levels at any age, an advantage that is maintained over the years."

Jerome L. Fleg,
MD.
Medical Officer, Division of Cardiovascular Sciences, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute;
Researcher at the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Science, Gerontology Research Center, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health;
Staff member of the Department of Cardiology, National Naval Medical Center.

The Heart Of Aerobics

Your heart is a muscle about the size of your fist. It lies behind and to the left of your breastbone or sternum.

Despite it’s diminutive size your heart beats about 100,000 times everyday, sending 9,000 litres (2,000 gallons) of your blood blood circulating through 97,000 kilometers (60,000 miles) of blood vessels that feed your organs and tissues.

See how hard your heart works for you.
24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Throughout your life.

The natural act of aging poses a significant risk factor for life-threatening heart failure.

As your heart ages it changes shape, shrinks and loses a little bit of its pumping capacity every year.2

"This study highlights how the aging heart's anatomy and function change hand in hand over time, similar to arteries stiffening, bones weakening from loss of calcium, and kidney function declining.

Physicians and patients need to recognize it as a process that can be accelerated by risk factors or possibly slowed down by healthy lifestyle choices and sound medical care."

Joao A C Lima,
MD, MBA
Professor of Medicine
Director of Cardiovascular Imaging
Johns Hopkins Medicine

Coronary heart disease is not a foregone conclusion.

Over the past 4 decades, numerous scientific studies have shown that regular aerobic exercise has the favorable effect of drastically slowing the ageing of the heart by promoting growth and pumping efficiency.3.4

What Happens To You When You Exercise Aerobically?

As you rhythmically and repeatedly move your legs, hips and arms, demand from the large working muscles increases sharply.

Your metabolism speeds up and body temperature rises.

More nutrients are used and more waste is created.

Your cardiovascular system (also called the circulatory system) is called upon to meet your body’s increasing demands.

Your heart will beat faster and you will breathe deeply to take more oxygen than usual into your body.

Increased lung activity creates a change in thoracic pressure that draws blood toward your heart.

Blood flow back to the heart from working muscles (called Venous return) is improved by the skeletal-muscle pump (a collection of large skeletal muscles) which, when contracted, assist in pumping blood back to the heart.

The chambers of your heart fill thoroughly to accomodate the vigorous returning blood flow and actually stretch.

The resulting elastic recoil produces a more forceful contraction and delivery of blood volume to the body.

This phenomenon is explained by the Frank–Starling Law which states that the stroke volume of the heart (the volume of blood pumped from the left ventricle per beat) increases in response to an increase in the volume of blood in the ventricles just before contraction (the end diastolic volume) when all other factors remain constant.

The result of all these spontaneous actions is:

Your heart’s mass and volume increase and your heart muscle grows and becomes more efficient - regardless of your age

“The physiology around it improves the function of the heart by making it more efficient and your blood vessels more flexible. In addition, the greater flexibility of the blood vessels make them more resistant to the buildup of plaque a known contributor to heart disease.”

Nieca Goldberg,
MD.
Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine,
NYU School of Medicine.

As aerobic exercise strengthens the heart and vascular system, it also directly improves blood flow to and around the brain and enhances the functionality of a multitude of neurotransmitters involved in cognitive processes.

How Does Aerobic Exercise
Affect Your Brain?

Before you even begin exercising, neurotransmitters called adrenaline and noradrenaline (also known as epinephrine and norepinephrine respectively) are released to prepare you for the exertion to come. This is known as the anticipatory response.

When you start exercising and your heart output increases, you release a protein called BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor) to protect yourself and your brain from stress.

The increased BDNF in the brain acts as a mood enhancer and a reparative element to memory neurons, making you feel at ease and clear-thinking after exercise.

At the same time, Endorphins are released in your brain. Endorphins minimize discomfort and are associated with a feeling of euphoria.

Exercise also positively influences the production/release/uptake of neurotransmitters Serotonin, Dopamine and Acetylcholine.

These are also exercise neurotransmitters which allow signals to pass from one neuron to the next.

Serotonin affects mood, appetite, sleep, memory and temperature regulation. Low serotonin levels are linked to depression.

Dopamine affects movement, emotional response and your ability to feel pleasure. By increasing the amount of Dopamine in certain regions of the brain, exercise can exert a number of health benefits that promote positive well-being and counter negative mental states.

Acetylcholine makes it possible for nerve cells to communicate with muscle cells and efficiently generate muscle contractions.

Image of brain scan courtesy of
Prof Charles H. Hillman,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“Aerobic fitness spares age-related loss of brain tissue during aging, and enhances functional aspects of higher order regions involved in the control of cognition.

More active or higher fit individuals are capable of allocating greater attentional resources toward the environment and are able to process information more quickly.

The data is suggestive that aerobic fitness enhances cognitive strategies enabling them to respond effectively to an imposed challenge with a better yield in task performance.”

Read the full study HERE.

Professor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla,
PhD.
Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology,
UCLA and Department of Neurosurgery,
UCLA Brain Injury Research Center,
Los Angeles, California.

Professor Charles H. Hillman,
PhD.
Departments of Kinesiology & Community Health,
Psychology, and Internal Medicine,
the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Urbana, Illinois.

According to a study 5 by the Department of Exercise Science at the University of Georgia, even a mere

20 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise facilitates information processing and memory functions,

Aerobic exercise positively affects brain function on multiple fronts ranging from the molecular to the behavioral levels.

A growing body of evidence supports the influence of exercise in vitality and function of the Central Nervous System and promoting resistance against neurological disorders.

Regular moderate aerobic exercise has been shown to provide protection against memory loss and dementia as we age.

Many studies have underscored a strong correlation between exercise and higher mental function in older adults.

And extensive research has shown that exercise has the extraordinary capacity to enhance mental health.

Active mature individuals tend to have
more and healthier blood vessels and a
“younger-appearing brain".

What aerobic exercise does, among other things, is:

spark the production of growth factors that help existing cells survive,

contribute to the formation of new connections between brain cells and

enhance the release of other growth factors that promote the development of blood vessels required to deliver nutrients to new brain cells.

"One of the things that happens with exercise is an increase in the micro blood vessels in the brain.

These blood vessels are associated with the birth of new cells.

So, there is a physiological link between exercise, neurogenesis and neuroplasticity."

Professor Fred H. Gage,
PhD.
Neurobiologist
Chair for Research on
Age-Related Neurodegenerative Disease,
Adler Professor at
the Laboratory of Genetics,
Salk Institute.

Aerobic Exercise Improves
Brain Function
Especially In Older Adults

Many older adults fear memory loss and worry they are headed down the road to dementia.

Every time they forget their keys, leave a door unlocked or fail to remember a name, they are reminded of this nagging concern.

The brain region called the hippocampus begins to shrink in older adults as part of the normal aging process.

This contributes to forgetfulness, memory loss and increased risk of dementia.

Aerobic exercise increases hippocampus size
and improves cognitive ability

In one notable study 6 a research team led by Dr. Kirk Erickson at the University of Pittsburgh and Dr. Arthur Kramer at the University of Illinois recruited 120 sedentary older adults without dementia.

Participants were randomly placed in 2 groups. One group was asked to walk around a track for 40 minutes a day, 3 days a week [aerobic exercise]. The other group did only stretching and resistance training [anaerobic exercise].

MRI showed that, after one year, the aerobic exercise group had an average 2% increase in hippocampus volume.

Those in the other group continued to show a decrease in hippocampus volume, on average about 1.4%.

While both groups showed an improvement on spatial memory tests, there was a significant correlation between increased hippocampus size and improved memory performance only for those in the walking group.

The researchers also examined levels of BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor) a small molecule known to be involved in learning and memory. They found that increases in hippocampus size were associated with increased amounts of BDNF.

Taken together, these results suggest that older adults who are inactive may be able to stop or reverse age-related hippocampus atrophy in just one year of moderate aerobic activity.

“We think of the atrophy of the hippocampus in later life as almost inevitable. But we've shown that even moderate exercise for one year can increase the size of that structure. The brain at that stage remains modifiable.”

Kirk Erickson,
PhD.
Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh.

Aerobic exercise improves
Executive Control Functions

Extensive research shows that aerobic exercise improves Executive Control Functions (ECF) in older adults.

ECF covers such things as:

the ability to process relevant information and discard distractions

planning and maintaining information in memory

complex thinking such as avoiding a car darting into your lane

multitasking such as talking on the telephone and checking e-mail simultaneously

"Executive Control processes are largely controlled by the frontal and prefrontal regions of the brain, areas which show negative metabolic and morphological changes during the normal aging process. Cells shrink and blood flow decreases.

A person who has not been physically active during his or her younger years still can benefit by walking.

The benefits you get from walking are in the varieties of cognition that show the largest age-related decline."

Arthur F. Kramer,
PhD.
Professor of Psychology and Director of the
Center for Cognitive & Brain Health at
Northeastern University.

Aerobic Exercise
For Mental Health

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "350 million people globally are affected by depression," and it is "among the leading causes of disability worldwide."7

A common measure of the severity of depression is the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) score. The BDI is a series of questions which the subject answers and a score is produced.8

Research has shown that after participating in a regular aerobic exercise program, patients with BDI scores corresponding to moderate to severe depression were able to reduce their scores into the mild to moderate category.9

Aerobic exercise has also been shown to improve mental health by reducing anxiety, depression and negative mood as well as alleviating symptoms such as low self-esteem and social withdrawal.10.11.12

Clearly, regular aerobic exercise, walking in particular, has the ability to slow the natural decline in physical performance that occurs with age.

If you're not already a regular exerciser, the biggest challenge is to get started.

Bear in mind that exercise does not have to be done all at once.

If 10 minutes of walking is too much, do two five-minute walks instead.

Once that amount of exercise becomes easy, additional exercise may be added in small amounts at a time.

Walking has been shown to be the best aerobic exercise for everyone.

Read the following article for more information.