No Need To Exercise. Live A Utopian Lifestyle Instead

All it takes is a little pill…too easy!

If you’re one of those people who cringe at the idea of having an exercise routine, worry not We have you covered.

Jonathon Shaw, managing editor for Harvard Magazine, has come up with a brilliant idea, a tried-and-tested way to to achieve health and fitness.

A PILL!

It’s ‘a marvel of modern medicine’. This pill will end everyone’s health and fitness worries. This is a pill that is wide in its scope, and addresses all manner of ailments, cancer, diabetes, obesity, arthritis, or diverticulitis, to mention a few.

This is one magical pill…it:

• makes your skeleton amazingly strong.
• allows your heart to beat steadily as in the days of your youth.
• and your blood lipid profile, daringly impressive.

But it has even more merit

‘You’ll grow new capillaries in your heart, your skeletal muscles, and your brain, improving blood flow and the delivery of oxygen and nutrients. Your attention span will increase. If you have arthritis, your symptoms will improve. The pill will help you regulate your appetite and you’ll probably find you prefer healthier foods. You’ll feel better, younger even, and you will test younger according to a variety of physiologic measures. Your blood volume will increase, and you’ll burn fats better. Even your immune system will be stimulated’.

Are you excited? Sounds like the panacea for all ills, doesn’t it!

If word gets out, the queues will be miles long as we excitedly await our magical supplies.

Just think about it. You won’t ever need to go for that run, or walk in the country. You will save heaps on your gym membership, not to mention doing away with all those fancy exercise clothes you once had to invest in.

Life will now take on that amazing glow of your youth.

Each day will be delicious!

There will be zilch to worry about.

Can’t say fairer than that, can you?

Oh dear, sorry to disappoint you…

I’m sorry for leading you up the garden path, but the thing is this.

Sadly, no such magic pill exists!

Yes, I lied to you, BUT…

I needed to get your attention and most people switch off on hearing that brutally filthy word…EXERCISE!

It’s not a magic pill, and it’s not some strange potion that you can gulp down first thing in the morning.

It’s exercise. And it doesn’t have to be onerous!

The truth is that our bodies are designed to move.

Let me tell you my story…

I wasn’t always so passionate about exercise. In fact I didn’t have a great belief in my ability to play any sport well. But then I married my athletic husband, and at his behest, with no previous experience, I decided to try to become a runner.

A runner isn’t something you become overnight, sad to say!

But short distances to begin with, with no harsh personal criticism on the days when I felt I was a failure, factored in, and within a few months I was running ten km each day.

Yet another lie….

But I was doing about fifteen minutes without stopping.

Still, it was a challenge.

I kept going though, because I had my young daughter keeping score.

I don’t suggest you do that. Little kids can be pretty exacting!

But pretty soon after that, our local fun-run was about to take place, a distance of ten kilometers. My husband and I trained for it.

On the morning of the event, I was as nervous as a kitten. I mean, competing with seriously-serious athletes who run marathons, can be pretty daunting!

But I did it! I finished in reasonable time, and, I’d run my first fun-run! More importantly for me, was that I beat my husband’s time.

Can you imagine the joy I felt? Not about beating my husband, but abut doing the race in the first place!

But wait! There’s more…

It was a few years after that, that I ran my first marathon. Oh the agony, and yet the incredible sense of achievement I felt.

Gosh, I wish I could have had my PE teacher standing on the sidelines, to be an eye-witness to a veritable miracle!

To be honest I couldn’t believe that I was capable of running such a distance, but I did it. My sense of pride was palpable.

Sure it was painful, but you know it was easy to tell myself a few days later, when I’d forgotten about the agony, that I could easily do it again.

I was hooked! I was hooked for many years, to be honest.

Time passes…

Today, however, I have switched to challenging walks, and I have promised myself that one day soon I am going to go back to my homeland to master every Munro, (all mountains that are over 914.4m), in Scotland.

It’s my dream.

Dr. Frank Hu mostly agrees with this…

Dr. Frank, associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health adds, that good nutrition is also important for health but that, ‘The single thing that comes close to a magic bullet, in terms of its strong and universal benefits, is exercise’.

I totally agree with him. A bad day at work will see me hit the road and I always return happy and mentally free. Moreover I am also able to deal with any of my work issues.

One particular episode sticks in my mind, one the bears out my theory. The day had been particularly challenging, so rather than offload on my family, I donned my running shoes and off I went.

Now where I lived at the time I had several preferred routes, all starting from the same base, home. Time-wise I must have jogged around ten kilometers, but the thing is this, to this day, I cannot recall which route I took on the way home.

Am I worried by this? Not one iota, because I have experienced this freeing of the mind on so many occasions. Whether it’s walking or running, the very fact that we are moving our bodies and minds in some synchronization, allows us to be completely liberated and untroubled. It’s not that you don’t think when you’re running. Rather your mind allows you to digress, and concentrate on other things.

Another bonus that I discovered, as a teacher, was that I could come up with different, often more creative approaches, to help a student who was finding problems with some aspect of learning!

Certainly there were many benefits, but coming home feeling happy was by far the best…exercise…my happiness pill!

So here’s a suggestion…

If you’re feeling, stressed, unhappy, confused, disorganized or anxious, hit the road, Jack!

Just get out there into the environment and move. You don’t have to decide exactly what you are going to do, but being in the open air and actually on the go, will have a profound effect on your mood.

Exercise makes you feel so much better, sets your equilibrium in balance, your work challenges alter, problems can be solved, and you’re mood will probably be upbeat.

The truth is, that running, or walking, hiking in the countryside, or playing your preferred sport, could be the answer to so many of our day-to-day health issues.

Doing something proactive rather than moping about a situation that is causing you angst, will have a positive outcome for you.

In my case, exercise was, and is, my way of dealing with personal issues, for de-stressing, clearing my mind, sleeping beautifully, and restoring energy.

But there are other benefits…

There is much research that supports the idea that it also improves your vitamin D level, important not just for bone health, but also for serious health issues such as, MS, many types of cancer, and heart disease.

These days too many of us spend our working lives cloistered in offices, working under artificial light, often not seeing the light of day from one working week until the next. Even weekends are given over to shopping and family obligations.

This means that exercise is something you must consciously make time for.

If you consciously determine to factor exercise into your weekly plan for health, you will find the time. But is must be a conscious decision.

It’s not about losing weight, or achieving that model figure, (though they can be nice by-products!), but it has lots to do with being able to relax, to sleep well, and having the energy to get best utilize your day.

Everyone’s a winner…

And given that it makes you happy, just imagine what it does to those around you!

Look, it’s hard to be true to a plan. You have to be seriously motivated, and that, is all up to you.

So here is an idea that will help you stick with your preferred routine.

Try to find a friend to exercise with. That way you will each be responsible for maintaining a schedule.

The negative excuses you find when exercising alone, won’t work with a friend.

And together you may even work out some personal issues!

Did you know that there is a strong link between exercise and your brain health?

It’s fair to say that many people exercise to keep their bodies aligned, or to improve their cardiovascular health.

But there are other benefits worth considering.

For example, the possibility that exercise could offset our risk for developing dementia or, that it could delay the progress of the disease for people already affected.

In a study of older people between the ages of sixty to eighty, those who exercised vigorously enjoyed better oxygenated brains and healthier patterns of mental activity, suggestive of improved cognitive functioning.

When you exercise on a regular basis, the protein FNDC5 gets stimulated, which in turn stimulates the production of BDNF (brain derived neurotrophic factor) a ‘fertilizer for your brain’.

This assists with the protection and regeneration of brain cells, and activates the brain’s stem cells to convert into new neurons, thereby developing the size of the brain.

In the past, the belief was that once our brains were mature, that was it, that they (our brains), were akin to rigid lumps of concrete. But now scientists believe otherwise. Our brains have the ability to change, BDNF being ‘the key player’, which suggests that brain deterioration could therefore be linked to low levels of this protein.

So there is hope.

The turnaround in health of our brains could be gained by exercising several times a week just for half an hour or so

But it gets better…

Even better outcomes are achieved when a new skill has to be learned. Combining a challenging skill, as well as being outdoors, could well be the way to go.

It doesn’t have to be running…

Orienteering for instance, which requires map-reading, or hill climbing (get over to Scotland and climb some Munros!),where you need to think about balance and safety, are two that come to mind.

If you consider an aerobic activity at the gym where routines need to be learned and followed, that would be a fine example of an activity to boost BDNF (minus the added outdoor benefit!).

It would seem therefore, that if we want to enjoy robust cognition right into our latter years, then we should start some form of exercise before it’s too late.

Have I convinced you?

If you’re still sitting on the fence, maybe feeling like an example of the old me (perish the thought!), take hope. If I can run marathons, if I can master every Munro, there’s huge hope for you.

Start as I did, small easy steps, until one day you are standing atop that mountain!

So forget about pushing magic pills, forget about the fact that I hooked you in on a few lies, and after forgiving me, see if a small-time exercise program, that you can add to as your fitness improves, can deliver a new, and happier YOU!