healthy living tips by Dr.Vina

Our body is designed to move. A life without enough movement can cause nutrition stress. The bones need daily deposit of calcium, phosphor and magnesium to maintain its strength and density. Without a certain level of physical exercise, the bones can not efficiently gathered nutrition from the blood even though the nutrition intake is enough. A healthy load to the bone caused by physical activities is an absolute need. Lack of physical exercise and inadequate calcium intake can cause osteoporosis, a certain condition which causes the bone to be fragile, easily broken and damaged. High calcium diet combined with physical exercise can help prevent osteoporosis.

Muscles need a certain stimulation to absorb nutrition from the blood. Without a regular use and practice, our muscles can grow weaker and shrink. This can lead to the decrease of strength. Physical exercise can reduce the risk of fat and increase the level of good fat in our blood. In addition, physical exercise can also increase the heart and lungs fitness.

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Have you jogged, played good sets of tennis or finished 18 holes of golf lately? Any physical exercise of your favorite can prevent chronic psychological stress which is a factor for heart disease and hypertension. Physical exercise causes healthy physiological changes to our heart and blood circulation system. Here are some facts about direct benefit of regular exercise to our body:

• It increases the circulation throughout our body and promotes a stronger heart. The level of heart beat to pump the blood can be lower.
  
• The oxygen and nutrients can reach our body cells more efficiently.
  
• The lungs elasticity is also enhanced allowing higher volume of inhaled air during respiration. When there is more oxygen coming in into cells in our body, the degeneration changes due to aging will be slowed down.
  
• The blood fat and cholesterol level is reduced leading to lower risk of heart disease.
  
• The increase in the burning calories due to physical exercise help control the excess fat which is a factor for heart disease and diabetic complication.

A regular exercise can increase our sense of alertness, enhance our immunity against diseases and wipe away feeling of depression and anxiety. An adequately heavy exercise can stimulate the release of endorphin from our brain. Endorphin is a substance produced by our brain with the effect similar to that of morphine. Endorphin creates the soothing or calming effect.

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Physical exercise requires certain nutrients in our body, including increase in need of water, calorie, certain minerals and a number of vitamins. The most urgent need is liquid.

Evaporation from the surface of our skin is a primary method for releasing the excess heat that accumulated in the muscles and organs during an intense physical exercise. Adequate liquid must be available to support the mechanism. Besides, the loss of liquid from our body due to evaporation reduces our blood volume. The drop in our blood volume cause our blood thicken and make it less capable in penetrating the muscle tissue to supply oxygen and nutrients.

One symptom of dehydration is fatigue, due to lack of oxygen and nutrients in our muscle and accumulation of waste substances. Here are some tips for balanced intake during your exercise:

• Top up 14 up to 16 oz of water for every pound of your weight that is lost during physical exercise
• For those who are following fitness program, drink water prior to physical exercise, during the exercise with 15-20 minutes interval, and after the exercise.
• Intake of 6-8 glasses of water is recommended for individual with limited physical exercise
• The best liquid to drink prior and during exercise is water
• Softdrink or fruit juice contains a lot of sugar and can not be absorbed quickly. If used, the liquid must be dissolved with water with at least twice as much as the volume.

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What is the relation between exercise and our stamina against stress? Physical exercise has to do with stress in two different terms. Firstly, exercise lowers mental and physical tension including the physiological changes associated with stress. Secondly, the exercise itself is a stressor to the body, changing the nutrition use pattern and increase the needs for a certain nutrients.

Our body does not give fight or flight response in most of psychological stressors. Thus the feeling of stress and the product of physiological stress will accumulate. An intense physical exercise is meant to wipe out this product of stress. The dangerous substance is removed from within our body. When exercise stops, our body will return to normal in the form of relaxation. In addition, physical workout in some way direct our mind and attention away from the stress and make us relaxed both mentally and physically.

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Exercise can do wonder to your health!
It increases your strength against illness and stress.
Exercising along with maintaining a healthy weight can reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Exercise also helps curb yourappetite and burn calories.
Regular, vigorous exercise increases a muscle's size and improves its circulation of blood.

What kind of exercise should we do?
How hard and how long do we have to exercise?

Types of exercise. Basically you can pick any exercise or sport that you can enjoy. Basically there are three groups of sport: racing, opponent and achievement.

Some like game exercise like tennis, basket ball or soccer, while others like more basic exercise like dancing, jogging and walking. The cardinal rule is always to start slowly and increases gradually for any type of exercise you choose.

If you feel that you have problems that affect your exercise safety (high blood
pressure, arthritis, heart trouble, often feel dizzy or have chest pains)
consult your doctor to find out the appropriate exercise for you.

How often. You can customize your own exercise schedule throughout the week. Just remember that the bottom line is regularity. So it is better to have 3 or 4 times exercise a week for 20 minutes compared to once a week for an hour.

Regularity. Finally work up your exercise gradually to at least 30 minutes, 4 to 6 times a week. This can include several short bouts of activity in one day. You might as well use your lunch break to exercise to help boost your physical activity to balance your busy day.

What is diabetes? When your body does not make or produce enough insulin, you
got diabetes. Insulin helps the body to use sugar as a source of energy.
There two types of diabetes:

• Type 1: when the body does not make an insulin hormone



• Type 2: when the body do not have enough insulin or their cells ignore the
  insulin they have

Most of the diabetes patients (almost 95%) have type 2 diabetes. There are
many factors affecting the probability of suffering from diabetes: weight, age,
family history, ethnic background, exercise, diet, and gestational period.
The risk of developing type 2 diabetes increases with the number of risk factors
you have. If you have 2 or more risk factors, talk to your doctor about how to
delay or prevent type 2 diabetes.