Last Updated on July 25, 2020
Through MSN, I’ve discovered an interesting site parade.com
A slide that they’ve featured caught my eye because I believe it provides valuable information: 4 Diseases You Can Fight with Fitness by Michael O’Shea.
1. Heart Disease
The article mentioned that regular exercise lowers blood pressure and reduce cholesterol.
Heart attack can really be a silent killer. Recently I’ve heard a surprising news that one of my former secondary school mate just died suddenly of a heart attack.
In my previous article on how being hostile makes one susceptible to heart disease, a hostile person can perhaps reduce the pent-up emotions and anger via exercising. Make a point to use the exercise time for relaxing- long term of doing that would help us all to relax easier.
I know that some quarters do argue that active people also die from heart attacks but if we all know that the risk of a heart attack is lowered many folds in an active person compared to an inactive one. If a person is active but unable to deal with stress, or going through extreme emotion turbulence, it may result in heart conditions.
2. Arthritis
Physical inactivity do bring in a faster onset of arthritis. Sadly, the more painful the joints get, the more we tend to avoid straining them. If our left knee is painful, we will learn to put on more weight when we stand/walk on our right leg. In the long run, muscle imbalance develops. Eventually, the arthritis would spread to the right knee as well.
I’ve heard real accounts of people who suffered much less pain in the knees after losing weight. Have you ever tried carrying a backpack, say about 10kg with you the entire day? How does your back and knees feel? After putting the backpack down, you would find much relieve. Even a 5kg bag (equals to a bag of rice) would put strain on you if you have to carry it around the whole day.
Therefore, imagine if part of that excess weight is gone- what a difference it would make. For arthritis, I generally would not suggest pool exercises unless it is in a warm pool. Exercises like yoga and stretching can help to improve the condition, as well as guided weight training to strengthen muscles around the arthritic joint. But it is wise to get help from a trained yoga teacher or personal trainer who have experience with arthritis patient.
I shall continue with more in the next part….
