Exercise Part 1: Too Much or Too Little?

Interestingly, it is possible to do either too much or too little exercise.  As an Integrative GP, I often see patients aka ‘gym bunnies’ who are exercising far too much.  Overtraining is reasonably common these days among both professional and recreational athletes.  Thankfully the message is finally getting out there that, like everything, moderation is best.  Before we get into the debate of too much versus too little, let’s look at the science behind exercise and the benefits to our health.

The benefits of exercise include:

• Improving mood.  Exercising helps reduce our risk of depression and anxiety.  A 5min stroll in nature (ideally with bare feet so that you can ground at the same time) can be a great emergency treatment for stressful times.

• Increasing your chance of living longer.  Even 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity can reduce your risk of dying early.  And 7 hours a week of physical activity will give you a 40 percent lower risk of dying early compared to those doing less than 30 minutes a week activity.

• Improving brain function.  We think, and learn better with regular exercise.

• Helping to optimise weight.  Despite what most of us were taught losing or maintaining weight is not as simple as eating less and exercising.  There are many factors that can affect weight.  For example, an unhealthy microbiome (the microorganisms within and on us) is linked to obesity.  To determine all the factors that is causing your weight issues it is best to discuss this with an Integrative Healthcare provider who is trained to investigate and manage these.  The exact amount of exercise that we need will depend on each person and so it is best to have a program tailored to you.  Nowadays, it is even possible with gene testing to gain better insight into which is the best type of activity for you.

• Reducing your risk of disease.  Diseases including heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, pre-diabetes, some cancers (especially breast and colon).

• Strengthening your bones and muscles.  This helps reduce your risk of fractures.  Exercise also helps manage the pain of arthritis, and slow and even reverse the loss of muscle mass that occurs with age.

• Improving your mobility and helping to prevent falls.  The more active we are the less likely we are to fall as we age.

There are specific benefits associated with each type of exercise:

• Cardio:  In addition to improving our cardio-respiratory (heart and lung) health cardio causes our body to release endorphins.  These natural ‘painkillers’ increase our sense of well-being.

• Strength work:  Doing strength work, tells your body ‘you are not ageing’.  How great is that!  My personal favourite is High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) as you can get an effective workout in only 7 minutes.  However, please refrain from ‘plyo-split squats’ or ‘burpees’ exercises that commonly feature in these programs.  These exercises are too hard on your knees and back respectively.

• Restorative exercise such as stretching/yoga/pilates/qi gong/tai chi: This type of exercise is great at increasing flexibility and for calming down our sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system.  This allows your parasympathetic (rest and repair) nervous system to dominate.  In turn, this helps us to both relax and repairs the damage created by exercise (and our stressful lives).

In the next column I’ll discuss how to exercise safely.  For now, please comment below on your favourite way to exercise.