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By Dr. Ben Lerner
Your body will adapt or un-adapt to whatever stresses you do or
don't impose on it. Consider these opposing forces.
Law of Adaption
If you run long distances, your muscles, joints, lungs and heart
will adapt in a way that allows you to go the distance. This is
a good thing, and the reason a marathon runner actually looks like
one. And, if you're a sprinter, your body adapts for short
distances. That's why sprinters look like and or train like
body builders.
So if you want to improve stamina and cardio functioning, you run
for a long time and your body adapts in a way to support that. If
you want to increase strength and power, you do short sprints and
you adapt for that.
If you want big, strong round muscles, you lift really heavy weights
over a short period of time -- like a power lifter. If you want
a more athletic build -- like a gymnast -- you lift weights
or perform activities that create more sustained pressure.
Law of Un-Adaption
So what about the opposite action?
Whatever you're training for, you also "un-train"
for. So a marathon runner doesn't make a great sprinter. Their
lungs, heart, muscles and tendons are adapted for a completely different
type of event. And, sprinters can't typically run a marathon.
It would be like trying to ride a bull across country.
Your heart, lungs, circulatory system immune system, muscles and
joints adapt to exercise by increasing their efficiency.
So your muscles firm up, your joints lube up, the bones get stronger
and thicker, your immune system gets cranking, your heartbeat strengthens,
and your lungs and circulatory system dramatically improve their
ability to take in, store and circulate oxygen.
On the other hand, if you do not exercise, your body un-adapts.
Muscles get flabby, bones get soft and brittle, joints get dry,
the heartbeat weakens and speeds up and you become oxygen deprived.
Exercise and Reversed Aging
People as old as 100 can dramatically increase their strength,
improve their balance, restore bone density, moderate diabetes and
diminish joint pain in just a few weeks of weight training. The
minute you start sweating and your heart begins pounding, your arteries
get more flexible and your blood pressure drops. This lowers your
risk of heart disease and stroke too.
For hours after exercise, your body is more sensitive to insulin,
keeping your sugar levels in check and reducing your risk of diabetes
too.
Being in shape causes your heart and blood vessels to work only
a fraction as hard as they do if you are out of shape. A conditioned
person will have a heart rate of approximately 60 beats/minute.
Someone who is out of shape will have a heart rate of approximately
80 beats/minute. This means if you are out of shape, your heart
will have to beat approximately 30,000 more times per day than if
you were in shape.
Dying Lighter
The purpose of weight loss is not only to weigh less, but to be
healthier. Weight-reduction plans that use unhealthy foods, diet
products, weird devices, drugs, supplements or even herbal "speed"
to help you lose weight may make you lighter, but not healthier.
When people ask me what I think about these plans I always say the
same thing: "Sure, you might lose weight. You will die 10 years
earlier, but at least you will be lighter."
The reality is, about the only positive thing about losing weight
the wrong way is that you will make it easier on your pallbearers.
The fact is, better health does not necessarily come by simply
losing weight. To improve the function of the Body By God operating
system, there must be less weight and fat. It is not only
how much you weigh that causes you to develop disease: It is how
much body fat you have compared to how much muscle you have.
The point of exercise is to increase the amount of real muscle
and decrease the amount of loosely packed muscle, or what we call
"fat." Having too little lean muscle mass compared to
body fat contributes to all sorts of conditions and diseases. High
body-fat/muscle ratios negatively affect organ function, hormone
balances, immune control, brain activity, blood chemistry and generally
make you more sensitive to potentially hazardous food elements like
sugar and cholesterol.
Diet alone cannot increase muscle mass and decrease fat mass. Only
diet combined with exercise will increase your muscle/body-fat ratios.
Through the law of adaption, the way the body adapts to exercise
is by increasing your muscle-to-fat ratio. This will not
only cause you to weigh less, it will cause you to have better health.
Again, this will still make it easier on your pallbearers, but they
will also have to wait a while before being called into action!
While many people rely on cardio activities alone and some on weights
alone, to really get healthy you need both. You need to get your
heart and lungs adapting in a healthy way through a regular cardio
program and your lean muscle mass up by working out with weights
or some kind of resistance.
Dr. Ben Lerner, along with Dr. Greg Loman,
owns Teach The World About Chiropractic, a Chiropractic training
company. They have helped build the largest spinal correction
clinics in the history of Chiropractic.
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