Fitness
How much exercise should you do to protect your heart | The Jerusalem Post
Physical activity saves lives, but now it turns out there’s a “precise dosage” at which it becomes especially effective in preventing heart disease.
Health and fitness tracking company Whoop has edged closer towards the future of personalised medicine by rolling out a new feature allowing customers to upload and ask questions of their past blood test results.
It means users of the screenless trackers can upload biomarker information such as cholesterol and average blood glucose readings and view these alongside their step counts, exercise data, stress and sleep scores.
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There are so many dilemmas when it comes to exercise: quantity versus quality, volume versus intensity, high impact vs low impact. But when we factor in ageing well and maintaining beautiful, radiant skin is added in as a factor, the choices suddenly become clearer.
If you want your skin to look great, don’t worry about clocking up more hours in the gym. There’s a way to efficiently do what’s necessary for your body – and it doesn’t involve excessive exercise, which can actually do more damage than good.
The next question, of course, is how? Join us in delving into this anti-ageing topic with three experts: a doctor, a personal trainer and longevity specialist. Here’s what they have to say…
How excessive workouts and stress cause cellular ageing
One of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to working out is thinking that more activity always guarantees more benefits. However, poorly structured workouts with too much exercise or moves that are not well planned can lead to unnecessary wear and tear on your body (including your skin).
This increases the risk of injury and results in chronic fatigue, which is counterproductive in the long term.
“The ideal approach is to create a structured, optimised exercise plan that stimulates key biological markers (or indicators) associated with living a long and healthy life – but without placing undue stress on the body,” explains longevity expert Gonzalo Ruíz Utrilla. “What truly makes a difference [with exercise] is the type of physical challenge the body receives and how it adapts to it.”
If we overdo exercise past a certain age, we combine the stress of sport with a high allostatic load. The allostatic load is the wear and tear the body experiences as it responds to demands – not just physical, such as exercise, but also life stress. When these loads become too heavy, they can over-activate your sympathetic nervous system.
“This excessive activation triggers chronic stress,” says the expert. “This stress not only impairs your body’s ability to repair itself but also decreases your metabolism’s flexibility, promotes continuous systemic inflammation and causes cells to age more quickly.”
© Getty ImagesThe skin benefits: How moderate exercise boosts collagen and oxygen
How does working out affect blood circulation and tissue oxygenation, and what specific benefits does moderate exercise offer as far as skincare?
Dr Sofía Ruiz del Cueto, co-director of Madrid’s Mira+Cueto aesthetic clinic, states that, “When you boost blood circulation, the skin receives a greater supply of essential oxygen and vital nutrients.
“This process allows the skin to renew itself by forming necessary collagen and elastin, and repairing damaged cells while also boosting hydration. It’s also effective at speeding up the removal of waste and toxins, which stops the kind of inflammatory reactions that cause premature ageing.”
© Getty ImagesAccording to the doctor, “Exercise also modulates cortisol levels (a hormone related to stress), which helps prevent premature ageing.”
She advises moderate cardiovascular exercise around three to five days a week, accompanied by a sensible diet rich in protein and antioxidants, as well as adequate hydration.
Is too much exercise making your skin look older?
You may be wondering if there are certain types of exercise that should be avoided because of the potential negative impact on your skin’s appearance. “You should avoid overdoing your workouts, because too much exercise speeds up cell damage (oxidation) and increases inflammation in the body,” says the doctor.
The expert also has one big “Do” and a big “Don’t”:
- Do stay hydrated before, during, and after exercise – it will keep your skin from being dehydrated, too.
- Don’t exercise during peak UV exposure hours or in high temperatures.
© Getty ImagesImpact training vs. strength training: Which is better for longevity after 50?
You may have also heard the notion that impact training accelerates ageing. According to CrossFit expert and personal trainer Jesús Valor, it’s crucial to understand precisely what “impact training” means, especially after the age of 50.
“By impact training, we don’t mean those group classes where jumping is the main feature of the workout, but rather exercises that make the bones, tendons and joints truly feel that they’re being engaged,” the expert says. “This is best achieved through strength training, which is highly recommended over 50 because, particularly for women experiencing menopause and a subsequent drop in oestrogen, they need to focus on it more than ever.”
© Getty ImagesMuscle is an endocrine organ that sends internal messages. For this reason, he believes, impact workouts (adapted to individual needs) are beneficial in every sense. “There is no scientific evidence that impact training, in moderation, accelerates skin ageing,” says Valor.
He advises that as time progresses, the body’s adaptation to stimulus and recovery naturally slow down, so the quality of your workout is paramount during midlife.
Strength exercises are the most highly recommended for delaying ageing, including for your skin. We’re not talking about lifting huge amounts of weight, but about properly moving your body – it’s a win-win.
Scientists have hailed the benefits of exercising early in life to lower the risk of your brain degenerating later. But new research suggests that even once you’re 45 or older, it’s not too late to try.
Having the highest levels of physical activity in midlife and late life was associated with a 41% and 45% lower risk of dementia, respectively, found the study that published November 19 in the journal JAMA Network Open. Midlife was defined as ages 45 to 64, while late life was ages 65 to 88.
“This study shifts the conversation from ‘exercise is good for the brain’ to ‘there may be key windows when exercise matters most for brain health,’” said Dr. Sanjula Singh, an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School and principal investigator at the Brain Care Labs at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She wasn’t involved in the study.
With an estimated 57 million people worldwide having dementia and nearly triple that number expected by 2050, the authors “wanted to investigate whether the impact of physical activity on dementia risk differed or stayed consistent across the adult life course,” said Dr. Phillip Hwang, lead study author and assistant professor in the department of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health, via email.
A downside of this study is that it can’t suggest how much exercise to do due to the measurement the researchers used, Hwang said. It was “a composite measure based on the number of hours a person spends sleeping, in sedentary behavior, and doing light, moderate and heavy activities in a day,” he added. “However, finding ways to be more active and moving around is important.”
Hwang’s findings are also affirmed by other studies that suggested more specific guidance. A 2022 study found that people who walked just 3,800 steps per day lowered their risk of dementia by 25%, and, generally, the more steps participants walked, the greater the benefits were. Using a bike instead of a car, bus or train for transportation has been linked with a 19% lower risk of dementia and a 22% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
MORE: Exercise quiz: Find the best workouts for you
“Given what is already known about the benefits of physical activity on other conditions — such as the heart, mood, stress, etc., which are also related to the brain and cognition — there are lots of other reasons as well to be more active,” Hwang said via email.
Adults need at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise per week, according to the World Health Organization.
Such exercise could be, for example, 150 minutes of brisk walking, 75 minutes of vigorous running or cycling, and strength training a couple of times per week, Singh said. Singh is part of the team that developed the Brain Care Score, a 21-point assessment of how a person fares on physical, lifestyle, social and emotional factors they can change to protect their brain health.
If you’re new to exercise, begin with slower or shorter workouts, then gradually increase intensity, said Dr. Raphael Wald, a neuropsychologist with Marcus Neuroscience Institute at Baptist Health South Florida. “Starting too aggressively can lead to orthopedic injuries, which may then limit your ability to exercise at all,” Wald added via email.
Build consistent habits that can help ensure you stay active daily, Wald said, such as walking for 20 minutes before work or taking a short movement break during lunch.
Tracking activity and dementia risk
The new study’s findings are based on 1,526 participants in early adult life — ages 26 to 44 — nearly 2,000 middle-age adults and nearly 900 older adults who were mostly White and part of the long-term Framingham Heart Study.
Physical activity levels in early adult life weren’t associated with dementia risk in either direction, the authors found. They also discovered that even for older adults who had the strongest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease — the APOE ε4 gene — high physical activity was still linked with a 66% lower risk of dementia.
The study has important limitations, experts said. “People who are more active may also engage in other healthy behaviors, have better baseline health, or differ in ways the researchers couldn’t fully measure,” Singh said.
The team acknowledged that it didn’t have details on middle- and older-age adults’ physical activity levels in their early adult lives or how habits changed over time, which could also influence risk for dementia. Participants may also misjudge their levels, so studies with tracker wearables would be a more objective way to measure exercise, Singh said.
Midlife and late life possibly being extra critical for brain health may be explained by a few factors, experts said.
“Exercise plays a major role in maintaining vascular health,” Wald said. “The most common vascular risk factors — high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, thyroid disease and high cholesterol — tend to emerge in midlife and later adulthood. It makes sense that exercise during these periods would have the greatest impact on reducing dementia risk.”
Physical activity is also thought to lower dementia risk by improving brain structure and function, alleviating inflammation and slowing the buildup of beta-amyloid proteins in the brain, Hwang said. The latter is a hallmark sign of Alzheimer’s disease.
If you’re reconsidering your fitness habits and other risk factors for dementia, Wald said, remember that maintaining balance and talking to your doctor about all the factors involved are essential.
Sign up for CNN’s Fitness, But Better newsletter series. Our seven-part guide will help you ease into a healthy routine, backed by experts.
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