Read Online Healing Through Exercise: Scientifically Proven Ways to Prevent and Overcome Illness and Lengthen Your Life by Jörg Blech - Free Book Online

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    This new understanding of the disease led to studies showing that physical activity turns out to be an excellent remedy against heart failure. More than 25 trials have demonstrated that regular exercise improves the pulse rate, increases the maximum oxygen uptake, and decreases blood pressure. Most participants of these studies also took drugs to prevent heart failure, but the training brought additional benefits, namely an increase of 15 to 20 percent in the amount of exercise they could endure. Often this was critical in making the life of a sick person worth living again.

    Heart patients who are not too excited about jogging might consider dancing. Italian researchers invited patients with heart failure to a dancing course that lasted eight weeks. These ladies and gentlemen gathered three days per week in the gym of the local hospital and danced for about 20 minutes. The dancers improved their physical condition to the same extent as volunteer patients in a control group who had trained on stationary bikes and treadmills. Not surprisingly, the dancers were much more motivated than the control-group patients, with more chances to laugh and maybe even flirt a little bit than those stuck on bikes or treadmills. 17

    Moderate exercise can also bring about changes at the molecular level. Doctors at the heart center of the University Hospital in Leipzig encouraged 12 patients with heart disease to exercise for six months: 20 minutes on the stationary bike every day, plus an hour walking or playing ball games every week. Subsequently, the researchers took samples from the flexor muscles of the patients’ thighs.

    The remarkable result, published in the journal Circulation , showed that the activity of so-called scavenger enzymes significantly increased in the muscles of the active patients, compared to 11 sedentary individuals with heart disease. These enzymes are beneficial because they remove aggressive substances known as free radicals, which can harm the heart muscle. 18

    Unfortunately, these discoveries have not yet reached all patients and physicians. Even half a century after the miraculous recovery of President Eisenhower, the healing power of exercise is withheld from many individuals with heart disease. Despite all the clear-cut advantages and benefits, states the cardiologist Paul D. Thompson of Hartford Hospital, “exercise training is rarely prescribed for cardiac patients, as evidenced by the fact that only about 20 percent of qualified patients are referred to formal cardiac rehabilitation programs. Among women and older patients referral rates are even lower.” 19

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    Growing Bones

    W HEN THE JOINTS HURT AND THE BONES ACHE, MOST PEOPLE would rather stay in bed. But as with other problems we’ve discussed, this will only lead to more trouble. Perhaps lying down might spare the cartilage, that smooth and elastic lining of the joints that makes sure bones do not grind painfully on each other when used. Yet it is not only the cartilage that helps your joints. The surrounding muscles also guard and protect joints because they cushion the jolts that damage a moving body. Thanks to muscles, cartilage absorbs fewer shocks.

    For that reason, physical inactivity is like poison for the joints. The more muscles waste away, the more bumps and jolts directly affect the cartilage, gradually wearing it down. This way, bones start to ache, people become less active, muscles shrink more, and cartilage gets battered even harder—not a happy trend. A joint may end up being completely destroyed so that it must be replaced with an artificial one. Or the threat looms of being moved to a retirement home. Neither dementia nor problems caused by arteriosclerosis are the most frequent reason for being institutionalized; most people are admitted because they suffer from an ailing musculoskeletal system.

    But there’s hope. People can’t reclaim lost cartilage, but they can definitely increase muscle mass. In this way, you