TLC - Exercise

Exercise is important for so many things! Research (see references below) indicates that it can:

• Increase your energy level
• Increase your sex drive
• Decrease your appetite
• Help you lose weight
• Make you happier
• Help you sleep better
• Make you live longer
• Be enjoyable
• Improve or eliminate chronic diseases (high blood pressure, diabetes)
• Make you feel better about yourself
• Help you make friends
• Prevents or delays onset of dementia
  
• Improves cognitive function

While almost everyone knows exercise is good for you, many people find it hard to get started or stick with exercise. Here are some tips for you if you find it hard to exercise:

1. Don't exercise, just be more active. You know this one already - take the stairs instead of the elevator, use your fingers to change the TV channel rather than the remote, take the parking spot that is farthest away from the store. This type of activity really does help!
2. Resurrect an old love. I recently started ballet classes and playing on a soccer team again - things I haven't done since college. It is great. Not only does it not feel like exercise (okay it feels like exercise when I am running down the soccer field) but it brings up a lot of great memories for me as well.
3. Find a partner. If you exercise with someone else (even if it is a paid personal trainer) you are more likely to stick with it. Since everyone should be exercising, it should be easy to find someone who needs to exercise too.
4. Rotate your activities. Exercise, like a lot of other things, can get boring if you do the same thing day in and day out. Sign up for a new class at your gym, do different activities in each season, try something new.
5. Do it for at least 6 weeks. Exercise feels good, but is a hard habit to keep and an easy habit to lose. Just commit to 6 weeks. I bet you will miss it if you don't do it after 6 weeks. That will make it easy to keep doing.
   
6. Beware of schedule changes. Starting a new job, changing gyms, a change in the seasons, a new school year are all things that can cause your schedule to change and make it easy to let exercise go. Whenever you are looking at a new schedule, make sure you schedule exercise too.
   

References:

Chakravarty EF, Hubert HB, Lingala VB, Fries JF. Reduced disability and mortality among aging runners: a 21 year longitudinal study. Arch Int Med 2008;168:1638-46.

Johansson M, Hassmen P. Acute pscyhological responses to Qigong exercise of varying duration. Am J Chin Med 2008;36:449-58.

Liu MR, So H. Effects of Tai Chi exercise program on physical fitness, fall related perception and health status in institutionalized elders. Taehan Kanho Hakhoe Chi 2008;38:620-8 [Abstract].
Martinsen EW. Physical activity in the prevention and treatment of anxiety and depression. Nord J Psychiatry 2008;62:25-9.

Plaisance EP et al. Postprandial triglyceride responses to aerobic exercise and extended-release niacin. Am J Clin Nut 2008;88:30-37.

Rolland Y. Physical activity and Alzheimer's disease: from prevention to therapeutic perspectives. J Am Med Dir Assoc 2008;9:390-405.