Health Notes-Exercise
My resistance bands hanging in the laundry room.
I love sharing tidbits about health that are easy to implement and have importance in our lives. Lately many of the crafting emails I receive are also sharing health tips and stories. I believe this is because we have to be our own advocate for our health, it can’t be outsourced to your healthcare practitioner. They don’t have time, band width and maybe even current knowledge. You are your best expert on what is going on inside yourself.
We all seem to have our ailments, many of us have similar ones. No matter what is your flavor of the month there are things we all need to do!
Sleep is super important. Water too, add a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to a pint of water and consume prior to eating, it will help lessen the glucose spike your meal causes. Food is medicine, so eat accordingly. I’ll talk about all of these again at some point.
Today’s topic du jour is exercise. You must build muscle. No matter what your age is you have the capacity to put on muscle. Muscle is a biomarker of health. That is the more muscle you have the healthier you are and the longer you will hang on to your health as you age. The goal is to have your health span equal your lifespan.
Need another reason to exercise? After the age of 65 one in three women will die from a hip fracture as a result of a fall. Usually from complications of hip surgery and infection picked up in the hospital. Lift weights, do resistance training! Change that statistic and stay out of the hospital.
Walking is the easiest and simplest exercise you can do. Get up and go for a walk as the sun is coming up. Not only do you get your blood moving, you are resetting your circadian clock for sleep that coming evening.
Next: resistance training. You must lift weights! That is how you build muscle. Resistance bands are excellent. Inexpensive as compared to weights, easy to use with a door jam adapter and there are many videos on You Tube that show you what to do. You will want to use gloves when working with bands.
A test: can you sit down on the floor and then get up not using your hands at all? If not, start to work on it. This is also an indicator of longevity. Working retail for decades has done a number on my knees, I now kneel forward from a standing position until I am on the floor then back up. It took a couple of weeks of working on this daily to achieve it. I do between 5-10 reps every morning. Another one that I have not mastered yet is sitting cross legged from a standing position and then standing back up. Getting there!
Having goals like these are good for you physically and mentally. They help you grow and remain vibrant. Being vibrant will feed your creativity!