‘An active lifestyle also helps slow down the aging process, keep our skin looking young(er), tone our muscles, enables us to have better metabolism and weight control…’
Are we on a suicide mission?
THE way many of us neglect and abuse our bodies with a bad diet, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and other unhealthy behaviors, makes one wonder if we have locked in ourselves in a self-destruct mode or are on a suicide mission. I have expounded on this in detail in my book, “Let’s Stop ‘Killing’ Our Children” (Central Books stores, amazon.com, and www.philipSchua.com), a pre-emptive and proactive strategy on healthy lifestyle from the cellular level and disease prevention starting from the womb.
Inactivity is a major “disease” that kills millions upon millions around the world. It is a mindset, a bad habit, a lack of discipline. A sedentary lifestyle (lack of exercise) is worse than many individual maladies afflicting man today, because it is a factor in most serious illnesses, like diabetes mellitus, heart attack, stroke, sexual dysfunction, osteoporosis, etc.
As a matter of fact, science has shown that physical activities, and regimented daily exercises, lower the incidence not only of those diseases listed above but of depression and suicide, Alzheimer’s, and even cancer. An active lifestyle also helps slow down the aging process, keep our skin looking young(er), tone our muscles, enable us to have better metabolism and weight control, fortifies our immune system against diseases and infections, and even improves our outlook in life. Indeed, daily physical exercise also protects our mind — our entire body and being.
Professor Frank Booth, Ph.D., of the biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri-Columbia, coined the term Sedentary Death Syndrome (SeDS) to dramatize the reality that “exercising is a matter of life and death.” That’s how important, and essential, physical exercise is to the human organism. It is a dreadful fact but 70% of Americans today do not exercise regularly. Just sitting around is a worldwide phenomenon. The World Health Organization last year reported that “about 2 million deaths annually worldwide are attributed to sedentary lifestyles.”
One of the subtitles of Professor Booth’s article is entitled Dead Man Sitting. “Sitting kills more than 300,000 Americans annually…if SeDS were a real disease, that would make it the third leading cause of death in the United States, right after heart disease and cancer,” he stated. These inactivity-related disorders affect nearly 75% of adults and children and are projected to cost the United States $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.
Is exercise essential?
Yes, very much so. To illustrate a point, let us exaggerate and consider a situation that is extreme: a person who is bedridden, a stroke victim or a quadriplegic, or someone practically unable to move. What happens? The muscles all over the body atrophy and in most instances replaced with fats, become flabby and lose bulk, the heart and lungs deteriorate, the circulation slows down, metabolism becomes impaired, the immune system declines, and the brain and all other organs function poorly. Humans, animals in general, were not meant to be vegetables.
Why is brisk walking better than jogging?
In the 60s and 70s, jogging was very popular as a form of exercise. However, there were significant attendant complications resulting from jogging, like injuries to feet, ankles, knees, hips, spine, etc. Studies in Sports and Cardiovascular Medicine two decades later showed that the cardiovascular benefits from brisk walking were the same as those derived from jogging, minus the many significant injuries which show as we grow older.
How many calories are burned by exercise?
For a 150-pound (about 68-kilo) person, doing the following for one hour burns the corresponding amount of calories indicated here: walking, 2 mph, 240 calories; walking 4.5 mph, 440; jogging 7 mph, 920; bicycling 6 mph, 240, 12mph, 410; jumping rope, 750; running in place, 660; running 10 mph, 1,280; swimming 25 yards per minute, 275; tennis, singles, 400. For half an hour of non-stop fast dancing (like swing or boogie), 200 calories; and, in contrast, for a 30-minute foreplay and actual sex, only 90 calories are burned, believe it or not. Obviously, we cannot rely on sexercise.
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Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, a Cardiac Surgeon Emeritus based in Northwest Indiana and Las Vegas, Nevada, is an international medical lecturer/author, Health Advocate, newspaper columnist, and Chairman of the Filipino United Network-USA, a 501(c)3 humanitarian foundation in the United States. He was a decorated recipient of the Indiana Sagamore of the Wabash Award in 1995, bestowed by the then Indiana Governor, later a Senator, and a presidential candidate, the Honorable Evan Bayh. Other Sagamore past awardees include President Harry Truman, President George HW Bush, Muhammad Ali, and Astronaut Gus Grissom (Wikipedia). Websites: FUN8888.com, Today.SPSAtoday.com, and philipSchua.com Email: scalpelpen@gmail.com
