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 Physical stress is a pretty unique one when we look at the bare essentials regarding how to release physical stress in a safe and healthy way, and also how that affects our health, our longevity and our immune systems. So what we’re going to do is a research review and then we’re going to get into the specifics as far as what type of movement we need to be doing to offset physical stress, how much and where can we do this movement. And some of the movements are really easy and the thrust of our workshops are going to be based on getting the most bang for your buck.
Here are some questions many patients ask me:
- What’s the least I can do to get the biggest changes in my health?
- What are the biggest changes in my wellness?
- What are the biggest changes in my longevity, the biggest changes in my energy and in my mental clarity?
Benefits of physical activity
Our nervous system is embedded in our all cells and tissues surrounding the joints, muscles, ligaments and tendons. These little nerve receptors that are embedded there actually will become stimulated when we move. When we stimulate these nerve receptors, the nerve receptors actually fire signals up into the brain. This is the key when we understand how powerful movement can be.
Leading a sedentary lifestyle actually causes these receptors to become deadened. They become weakened and the brain is not being stimulated or feed, so it’s just like a generator that has been worn down, a light bulb that gets duller, duller, and duller. We actually have the power to turn it on and charge it. And how we do this is by moving our joints; especially our joints of our spine through their normal ranges of motions. What happens after the brain gets stimulated is actually we have an increase in blood flow, increase in oxygen, and what we actually see now is the brain can actually regenerate neurons; and those are the little brain cells.
Back about 10 years ago, there was really not a lot of evidence at all showing that brain cells can ever even regenerate. Now we see that not only can they regenerate, but they can also re-wire. We have tons of research showing that anyone who engages in physical activity around three times a week. Some people like five times a weeks, but a minimum of three times a week, 20 to 30 minutes of just brisk walking alone can actually remodel and rewire the brain. And we’ve seen huge changes, not just in IQ, but also in memory.
Movement turns off Stress Switch
Second mechanism that happens when the brain gets simulated by our movement is that the brain can actually turn off the stress switch. Inside our brain there is a little switch that when stimulated by physical movement, it can actually turn off the stress response.
And what I tell our patients is that a lot of times it’s like our car being stuck in first gear, we’re trying to drive across the country struck in first gear in the old stick shift car. What happens is the engine is never going to make it, and that’s what happens when people are stuck in a stress mode. They’re constantly overwhelmed, they’re constantly inundated. Their body is stuck in first gear, and there’s no way that that body is going to make it in a longevity standpoint; there no way it’s going to make it the 120 years that it was designed for. So what I tell people is doing physical movement actually takes the car, unsticks the gear and lets it drop into second gear; gives that engine a break. When second gear kind of gets wound up, you can knock it into third gear and take the stress off of the engine of our bodies. So physical movement can actually turn the stress response off in the brain, then the brain actually secretes what the runners call, the runners high. They actually secrete chemicals called endorphins and kafalins and neurotransmitters. And what these would do actually, they have antidepressant effects.
Exercise versus effects to pharmaceutical medicines
Research shows the effects of movement versus the effects of pharmaceutical drugs like Zoloft and Paxil and all the latest drugs, and physical movement got better results than the actual drugs themselves. The nice thing is the body was producing these chemical naturally in the right amount, at the right time, with no side effects of homicide. Every shooting from Littleton, Colorado to Virginia Tech has been linked to a child who grew up taking Ritalin and other psychotrope antidepressant drugs. It is actually on the labels saying psychotic episodes being one of the number one side effects in addition to shrinkage of the brain. Movement balances brain chemistry and it elevates your mood, and balances your emotional feeling of well-being. Movement is a very powerful, powerful stimulator of the brain and all the feel good chemicals that go along with it.
The second thing that we look at when we look at the benefits of movement is what happens to our immune system when we move. Because we’re shutting off the stress switch in our brain, as soon as the stress switch gets shut off we see that immune system function gets restored. If we can keep that switch off, the immune system gets stronger and stronger and stronger. So they did some fairly large studies showing that people who engaged in regular levels of exercise, regular movement on a weekly basis, had a 50% reduction in colon cancer. And keep in mind that colon cancer is the third most popular cancer in the world, and the fact that you can offset it just by moving is very impressive.
They also looked at 60,000 women with gall bladder disease and the formation of gallstones, and they saw a 20% deduction in gall bladder removal surgeries with people who just moved. And all they did was walked for one hour a week, and they had 20% reduction in gall bladder disease. So there’s some pretty impressive research just on disease prevention and movement. Of course, we all know the studies of reducing your cholesterol through movement. Increasing your good cholesterol and degrading the old bad cholesterol. But they also have done quite a bit of research on prevention of heart and attack and stroke through movement. You can really radically reduce your risk of a lot of these diseases just by moving.
Our third component is that we looked at the musclo-skeletal system and bone density, and one of the things that happen when we move, is the muscles attach to the bone. Every time we move and our muscles contract and relax, it actually stresses the bone in a good way. When the bones get stressed, the bone actually lays down more mineral and more density, so one of the big ways to prevent osteoporosis is through movement. Keep in mind, we’re looking at joint health, we’re looking at immune system function, brain function, all of these are the healthy side effects of exercise and movement. Let’s get into one other area that I think is a popular topic and that is the area of detoxification.
One of the big mechanisms behind detoxification is that regular movement and exercise circulates our lymphatic system. Our lymphatic system is basically the filter that cleans out all of the gunk in our system and what we want to do is we don’t want that system to become stagnant. And the only way that that thing pumps and moves is through movement. The heart pumps the blood around, but the lymphatic system did not come equipped with a pump. So what we want to do is move.
And some of you may imagine that when you do an exercise that actually creates sweat that you’re going to also detoxify through your sweat and through your pores, so that’s a second avenue of detoxification. And the third avenue, believe it or not, a lot of the toxins are in a gas form and when you increase your breathing through exercise as you know, you start walking a little faster your breath becomes deeper and more rapid. You can actually pull toxins from your blood and it’s in a form of gas that gets exchanged at the lungs, so basically the garbage gets taken out every time you exhale and you breathe in clean air when you inhale.
How Much Exercise?
You may ask:
- But how much exercise do I really need to do?
- And you know, what kind of exercise do I really need to do and where do I exercise?
- Do I join a gym?
- Can I do this stuff at home?
Physio Ball
So let’s talk about the type of exercise. The first type of activity that I like to have people do is to go and buy a physio ball and if you’ve seen them at the gym, it’s a big round, rubber ball that you sit on. And instead of sitting in our lazy boy or your couch while you’re watching the news at night or whenever you’re sitting at a computer, roll this little physio ball there, and put the chair to the side and sit on the ball. This is what I call active sitting, and it’ll actually engage the spinal joints and spinal stimulation because you’ll have to activate your core muscles and stabilizers, and when you do that, it actually fires those receptors all the way up into the brain and what we see is, you can stimulate the brain and get benefits of exercise just by sitting.
Rocking Chair
The other thing that I have people do is if they do have a chair and they don’t have room for a physio ball, to get a chair that rocks. If you can rock while you’re at the computer, or if you can rock while you’re watching your sitcom or your favorite show or the news, what we want to see is rocking inducing that gentle spinal motion that’s going to stimulate these nerve receptors that we talked about. So bare minimum people, get in front of the rocking chair, or on a ball or while you’re at work, if your employer allows you to do that, you know, roll up one of those balls and sit on those. Even if it’s not for the whole day, if you just do 30 minutes a day, you’re going to notice a real big difference in your energy levels and your mental clarity.
Walking
The next set of exercises, the next rung on the ladder would be walking. So walking could be done preferably outdoors. Studies have shown that because you’re detoxifying, you want to have clean air that you’re putting in and as you exhale, you want the bad air to be exhaled in an outdoor environment if you can. The benefits for exercising outdoors is really, really, profound. We find that there is 2-1/2 times less cancer causing substances in outdoor air than there is in indoor air. So, you know, we want to work out and exercise in an environment that is not so toxic.
Exercise during the day
And the other benefit is exercising during the day – the daytime we can get exposure to daylight or sunlight, not direct sunlight. Anytime before 11 a.m. or after 2 p.m. is generally safe, but we do want sunlight or daylight to hit our skin, because what it does is it converts cholesterol to vitamin D which is – not only do we need vitamin D, but we want to degrade any excess cholesterol in our systems. So exercise does that through movement, and sunlight will actually aid in that process of vitamin D production and cholesterol conversion.
Last, but certainly not least, we want to look at what happens in regards to our brain when we’re exposed to daylight. We see chemicals get secreted that support healthy sleep wake rhythms, so getting into that deep restorative sleep is actually aided by exposure to daylight. It kind of clicks in your brain and secretes some chemicals of melatonin that lets your body know when it’s sleep time and when it’s wake time.
Mini Trampoline
Some other really nice exercises I have people do, they can go to Wal-Mart and buy a $14 little trampoline, a mini trampoline, hold on to their couch or a chair, the back of a chair and gently rebound during one of their sitcoms for 20 to 30 minutes. Start out very slow. You don’t have to get air between the trampoline and your feet. A lot of people think that they have to do crazy, crazy, feats on this trampoline, but in reality, a very slow, gentle, bouncing will actually simulate this neurology in a really nice way. Shut off that stress mechanism that we talked about and you get lots of benefits and it elevates your heart rate. A lot of times, you’ll brake a little bit of a sweat and aid in that detoxification. So I like the rebounding trampoline idea. I think that’s great.
Swimming
Swimming is fantastic because it has a de-compressive effect, so if anybody has any issues with joint pain or joint dysfunction and those haven’t healed up yet, what you want to do is get into a pool. It takes all the effects of gravity off of your skeletal system and allows you to get very, very, low force de-compressive, low impact movements through swimming. So I have people a lot of times walking the pool about chest deep. I’ll have them walk back and forth 15 to 20 minutes. Other people who are decent swimmers, you know, I’ll have them swim. But the bottom line is they’re moving. And again, movement is life; so very good idea. Swimming is fantastic.
Get Creative
Others are overachievers I call them. They like to go and actually join and area and get a trainer and have someone walk you through, but just make sure that the exercise that you’re doing is balanced. Make sure that if you go and look at a yoga and a pilates studio, make sure the person is actually certified in yoga or pilates and, you know, make sure that you hear good reviews from some of the people around there and make sure it’s a reputable place. You definitely want someone guiding you who has a good background and knows what they’re doing. So yoga and pilates are, again, another great addition; incorporates breathing, relaxation and taking the joints through their full range of motion.
Resistance Exercise
Resistance exercise -- A lot of people want to know about resistance. Do I have to lift these heavy weights and do all this crazy stuff to get benefits of exercise? And the answer is, no you don’t. We’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes of brisk walking or swimming or any of the other exercises that we noted so far. That’s three times a week; 20 to 30 minutes. Now as far as doing heavy weights and resistance exercise, most studies show if you can get 6 weeks in a one year period to where you can get in there and actually do some of those machines where you’re actually activating and working some of those muscles, 6 weeks a year will dramatically decrease your risk of osteoporous due to that law that we talked about, where any time you cause a muscle to contract and relax and contract against gravity, the body lays down heavier bone density. So just keep that in mind. Six weeks of resistance exercise in a 12 month period is a minimum. You can do more, but again, I want you to get the most bang for your buck.
Cross Crawl Exercises
Last but not least, we have what’s called cross crawl exercises, and basically it’s walking. A lot of people will do it in a marching form. So people who are bed ridden, I have them do it while they’re laying on their back, but what a cross crawl is, is it actually stimulates -- very, very, great way to stimulate the communication between the right and the left hemisphere of the brain. And what that benefits is everything we talked about. It moves those joints, it stimulates the receptors and it causes the brain to actually improve in its function. They did a study on marines who went through the boot camp and afterwards they did their post IQ and they actually had an improved IQ of 32 points, and they linked it to all the Army crawling, the cross craw exercises that they were doing.
So I don’t expect you to get on ground in the dirt and crawl around, but the essence of a cross crawl is if you are stepping forward with your left foot, your right arm would come out like you’re shaking someone’s hand. So as you step forward with you’re right foot, the left arm would come out, and you would alternative. So that’s the essence of a cross crawl. If you are bedridden for whatever reason, you would be in bed, you would lift your left knee up and you would raise your right arm out. So you can alternate while you’re laying on your back.
If you were to march in place, remember you don’t need to be on track to do a cross crawl, you can do it in place. You can do it in a cubicle. You can raise your left knee and raise your right arm and then raise your right knee and raise your left arm and you just go back and forth and alternate like a marching effect. And again, great way to stimulate the brain and nerve system, great way to turn off that stress response, and the benefits of exercise are just fantastic and we look at bare minimum to get the most out of it.
Again, I think this physical workshop that you just had is an excellent way to really offset the harmful effects of stress and really extend the quality of your life and your family’s well-being.
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