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All-Ages-Senior-Yoga-Fitness

Healthy Aging: How Beginner’s Yoga Can Help You Live an All Around Healthier Life

While most of us know that regular exercise is an important part of overall health, it can be difficult to make our bodies perform in the ways we think are necessary in order to feel the physical benefits. This is especially true as we age, when muscles and organs begin to work differently and we lose flexibility and mobility. Beginner’s yoga is the perfect remedy for addressing these limitations as we age. With both physical and mental benefits, the regular practice of yoga, at any level, can help you to live an all around healthier life. Here are just a few of the best reasons to take up yoga now, regardless of the number on your birthday card.

Physical Benefits

Many people begin practicing yoga in order to reap the physical benefits of the exercise. These are some of the ways yoga improves your physical health:

Increases stamina, flexibility, and mobility
The regular practice of yoga strengthens muscles and joints, allowing you to achieve more with your body, which is especially important as you age. It increases stamina, flexibility, and mobility, together with balance and coordination, which provides an effective yet gentle total body workout.

Helps encourage weight loss
We all know that increased physical exercise, when coupled with a healthy diet, can help you to achieve weight loss success when repeated regularly. This is also true for yoga. Once you begin to strengthen some of those forgotten muscles and joints, you will be able to practice yoga at a higher calorie burning level.

Alleviates physical ailments
Yoga practitioners around the world sing the praises of the exercise’s ability to remedy a number of physical ailments, some of which are particularly prevalent as you age. Regular yoga, even at the beginner’s level, can help to alleviate symptoms of heart conditions, blood flow and circulation issues, and muscle, bone, and joint problems. This kind of physical exercise also lowers cholesterol and blood sugar, thereby lowering your risk for other related health issues like diabetes and stroke.

Mental Benefits

If you weren’t convinced to begin practicing yoga by the physical benefits alone, check out the ways in which yoga can increase mental health as well.

Relaxes mind as well as body
The repetitive and meditative style of yoga is called upon time and again to help relax both the body and the mind. Poses performed at the beginning and end of yoga routines in particular are focused at calming the mind and relaxing the muscles in your body. This relaxation cannot be underestimated when it comes to the state of your mental health and well being.

Gives focus and awareness
Repeated exercises like those found in beginner’s yoga classes are designed to focus and sharpen your mind, increasing both your awareness of the world around you as well as your concentration levels. This can be especially beneficial for very busy people, older adults, and even energetic children, who find that yoga helps them to focus their train of thought and remain calm even in the most stressful of situations.

Relieves stress
Calming thoughts and repeated poses that are common to yoga have the ability to release tension in the body, giving focus to the practitioner. This focus allows positive thought, which logically relieves stress. Lowered stress levels are good for everyone, but best of all they have positive knock-on effects with regards to your physical health too, making yoga an all around positive practice for a healthier life


Kaitlin Krull is a writer and mom of two girls living the expat life in the UK. Her writing is featured on Modernize.com and a number of fitness, health, and home decor sites around the web. She’s a yoga enthusiast of 5 years and loves anything that promotes a healthy mental state and positive lifestyle.

middle aged stretching outdoors

Yoga for Mental Health

Since yoga has been found to help those with diseases and illnesses like Alzheimers, Arthritis, it’s a given that it can help ease mental health issues and disorders. A new review on the health benefits of yoga, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, with help from researchers at Duke University School of Medicine, found that yoga could be a promising treatment for some mental illnesses.

Woman Receiving Massage

Oncology Massage by Kathy Flippin

Oncology massage is simply a massage in the context of someone going through cancer treatment. The most common cancer treatments are surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Because these treatments often leave “injured areas” such as surgical incisions, radiation burns and general system fatigue, we have to know how to work with these conditions, to be able to give a good massage without hurting them. Studies have also shown that individuals that receive massage require less anti-nausea and pain reducing medication.

diabetesmanagement

Pre-diabetes – A Wellness Opportunity To Help

There is an opportunity for wellness and wellness coaching to impact the lives of millions of people in a life-saving way. 79 million Americans are estimated to have a condition called pre-diabetes. Usually symptom free, without intervention they will develop full-fledged Type II diabetes within ten years and possibly endure physical damage to their heart and circulatory system along the way. Yet, according to the American Diabetes Association, if a person is successful at lifestyle improvement they can completely avoid the onset of diabetes 70% of the time.

yoga-woman

Meditation for Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia is a condition where there is muscle pain, fatigue, and tender spots on the body. While there is no cure for this condition meditation may help you to cope with the symptoms. There are many benefits of meditation for Fibromyalgia including: decreased stress, feeling more at ease, decreased blood pressure and heart rate, decreased anxiety, increased energy and pain tolerance.

Fibromyalgia signs

Exercise and Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia is a debilitating condition that affects roughly 1 to 3% of the general population. The syndrome is characterized by widespread muscle aches and pains, stiffness, fatigue and muscle spasms. Most people with fibromyalgia report difficulty doing everyday activities such as carrying objects, walking and competing ADLs (activities of daily living). Pain, fatigue, helplessness, psychological distress and

difficulty coping with stresses plague many people with the condition. The exact causes of fibromyalgia are not well understood, but it is thought to be a combination of increased sensitivity to pain and environmental and psychological factors.  Criteria for diagnosis of Fibromyalgia from the American College of Rheumatology include:

  1. Chronic widespread pain in all four body quadrants
  2. Pain in 11 of 18 tender points
  3. Other symptoms: fatigue, weakness, attention and memory disturbances, heat and cold intolerance, and weight fluctuations.

For unknown reasons, a much larger percentage of women suffer from fibromyalgia than men.

Treatment of Fibromyalgia

Long-term effective treatment includes education, pharmacotherapy, behavioral therapy, and exercise. It is important to educate individuals that fibromyalgia is chronic, but it is not progressive and does not cause permanent damage or inflammation. Active participation is the key to improving their condition.

Can Exercise Help?

Affects one in 100 people over age 60

One would think that individuals with fibromyalgia shouldn’t exercise. And many people limit physical activity out of fear that it will make their symptoms worse. But in reality, if you have fibromyalgia, you can’t afford to not exercise.

If done correctly, exercise interrupts the downhill spiral of muscular and cardiovascular deconditioning and the resulting loss of function. Deconditioning leads to increased muscle soreness after even minimal amounts of physical activity. Additionally, many individuals have postural imbalances, tight muscles and poor range of motion, all of which place more strain on the body and movement.

A program including consistent aerobic exercise improves function, symptoms and well-being. And strength training improves muscle strength and reduces exercise-related pain and exercise-induced muscle fatigue. Overall, an exercise program can help to alleviate many of the physically and emotionally painful symptoms of fibromyalgia.

Exercising Safely With Fibromyalgia

Prior to increasing physical activity, discuss your plans with your physician. Because postural imbalances and tight, inflexible muscles are common in individuals with fibromyalgia, every activity session should begin and end with mobility (flexibility and range-of-motion) activities. You should also include self-myofascial release or foam rolling to help loosen tight muscles and prepare the body for movement. These exercises should be done slowly, emphasizing quality of movement, and never be painful.

Once you are able to perform these basic exercises comfortably, add strength training two to three times a week using light weights. The emphasis is not on quantity, but rather on the ‘quality’ of muscle movement. If you use too much weight, try too many sets or repetitions, you can cause muscular microtrauma, which leads to muscle soreness and can potentially worsen your symptoms.

Aerobic exercise should also be on your exercise plan. Warm water provides an optimal medium for beginning your exercise program. Many communities have facilities that offer warm-water exercise sessions for people with arthritis and these classes are ideal starting points for those with fibromyalgia as well. Walking is also an excellent activity. Other types of exercises, such as cycling, stairstepping and using other popular machines found in fitness facilities, may increase symptoms if you don’t maintain correct posture. Aerobic activities should be undertaken at a moderate intensity a minimum of three times per week. Start with just a few minutes and gradually increase duration to build up to 20 to 40 minutes of activity each day.

The key to exercise success for individuals with fibromyalgia is consistency. When you experience flare-ups, back off or take a day off. Resume your physical-activity program as soon as you feel better.

With appropriate mobility exercises, strength training and aerobic conditioning, you can expect to see improvement in your functional status overall.

How can an exercise professional help someone with Fibromyalgia?

Sclerosis-exerciseIf you have fibromyalgia and are considering starting an exercise program, you may have questions such as:

  1. What type of exercise should I be doing? Aerobics? Weight training? Both?
  2. How intensely should I be working?
  3. What if I feel pain or discomfort during exercise?
  4. Where should my heart rate be?
  5. What time of day should I exercise?
  6. Should I change my nutritional habits at all?

A certified personal trainer or other exercise professional can help to answer all these questions and develop an exercise program that is tailored towards your needs and abilities. Your trainer will do an initial evaluation on you to find out your baseline measures in terms of aerobic capacity, strength, flexibility, bodyfat, and circumference measurements. An evaluation may also look at your posture and how you perform basic movement patterns. Based upon this information, your trainer can determine what muscles may be tight and need to be stretched or foam rolled. The evaluation process will also indicate what muscles are weak and need to be strengthened through resistance training to help improve mobility and improve quality of life. An exercise professional can also formulate a target heart rate zone for you to train in while you perform aerobic exercise.

If you develop any symptoms during exercise, your trainer should recognize the situation and alter the activity accordingly.  Individuals with fibromyalgia often have flare-ups of intense pain. Communication between you and your trainer can help to pin point certain exercises or movements that may cause these flare-ups and be avoided or decrease the intensity. Sometimes rest is the best remedy for pain flare-ups. Your  trainer will develop a strength training routine customized towards your needs and abilities and shows you ways to modify exercises or movements that may be too intense or demanding, especially at first. The goal of the client-trainer relationship is to create an exercise program that is effective, challenging, yet comfortable and ultimately leads to a better quality of life.


Eric Lemkin is a certified personal trainer, strength & conditioning specialist, corrective exercise specialist and founder of Functionally Active Fitness. Lemkin has been a certified personal trainer for 17 years and has helped people ages 8-80 reach their fitness goals through customized personal training – specializing in exercise for the elderly or handicapped. 

References

1. Wolfe, F.H., K. Ross, J. Anderson, et al. Aspects of fibromyalgia in the general population: sex, pain threshold, and fibromyalgia symptoms. Journal of Rheumatology 22:151–156, 1995.

2. Buchwald, D., P. Umali, J. Umali, et al. Chronic fatigue and the chronic fatigue syndrome: prevalence in a Pacific Northwest health care system. Annals of Internal Medicine 123:81–88, 1995.

3. Skinner, J.S. Chronic fatigue syndrome: Matching exercise to symptom fluctuations. The Physician and Sportsmedicine 32:28–32, 2004.

4. Tuck, I., and D. Wallace. Chronic fatigue syndrome: A woman’s dilemma. Health Care of Women International 21:457–466, 2000.

5. Clauw, D.J., and L.J. Crofford. Chronic widespread pain and fibromyalgia: What we know, and what we need to know. Best Practices in Research and Clinical Rheumatology 17:685–701, 2003.

6. Norregaard J., P.M. Bulow, J.J. Lykkegaard, et al. Muscle strength, working capacity and effort in patients with fibromyalgia. Scandinavian Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine 29:97–102, 1997.

7. Simms R.W., S.H. Roy, M. Hrovat, et al. Lack of association between fibromyalgia syndrome and abnormalities in muscle energy metabolism. Arthritis and Rheumatism 37:794–800, 1994.

Glucometer, sport shoes, fresh apple and accessories for fitness

What You Need to Know about Exercise and Diabetes

Do you have type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, or prediabetes? Then you need to know that exercise is a cornerstone in the management of all of these conditions, and it can benefit your health in so many ways.

diabetes oldSometimes, being active can actually make it more challenging for you to manage your blood glucose (“blood sugar”) levels, unless you learn more about its effects. I have always known at some level that exercise generally did good things for my blood glucose, even before I had my first blood glucose meter (after going 18 years without access to one).  How could I tell without a blood glucose meter?

Being active always made me feel better, physically and emotionally, so much so that I earned a PhD in Exercise Physiology to understand why. You don’t need to go that far with your education, but there are some basics about being physically active with diabetes or prediabetes that you really need to know.

Here are some things that I know about exercise now that I wish someone had told me years ago.

#1: Exercise can help erase your blood glucose “mistakes”

  • Exercise acts kind of like an extra dose of insulin.
  • At rest, insulin is the main mechanism your body has to get glucose into muscle cells.
  • During exercise, glucose goes your muscles without needing any insulin (via muscle contractions)
  • Being regularly active makes your muscles more sensitive to insulin, so it takes less to have the same effect when you eat during or after exercise.
  • What better way to help erase a little overeating of carbs (or some insulin resistance) than a moderate dose of exercise to lower your blood glucose?

#2: Exercise doesn’t always make your blood glucose go down

  • It doesn’t always make your blood glucose come down, at least not right away.
  • During intense exercise, the excess glucose-raising hormones your body releases can raise your blood glucose.
  • Glucometer, sport shoes, fresh apple and accessories for fitnessOver a longer period of time (2-3 hours), it usually comes back down, but who wants to wait that long?
  • If you take insulin, you’ll need to take less than normal to correct a post-workout high or your blood glucose will likely be crashing low a few hours later.
  • A cool-down of less intense exercise (like walking) can help bring it back to normal, so do an easy, active cool-down after intense workouts or activities.

#3: Your muscles are critical to managing your blood glucose levels

  • Exercise also helps you build and retain your muscle mass.
  • Muscles are the main place you store carbs after you eat them—like a gas tank.
  • Exercising helps use up stored carbs, but can also increase the size of the tank.
  • When you eat carbs post-exercise, they can easily go into storage with a little insulin.
  • Being sedentary keeps the tank full and makes you resistant to insulin.
  • Aging alone can cause you to lose muscle mass over time, but you can combat it to a certain extent by recruiting all of your muscle fibers regularly.
  • Resistance training and/or high-intensity intervals build muscle more because they recruit the faster fibers that you don’t use when walking or doing easier activities.

#4: Exercise is the best medicine there is

  • Use exercise to control stress and to stave off depression—with no bad side-effects!
  • It’s a natural antioxidant—more effective and better than supplements!
  • Being regularly active prevents all sorts of cancers.
  • If you’re active, you’ll likely feel better and look younger than you are (as long as you don’t exercise too much).
  • You’ll be even less likely to catch a cold if you exercise moderately and regularly.
  • Standing more, taking extra steps, and fidgeting even help—be active all day long, and don’t forget your daily dose of the best medicine there is!

For other tips on exercise and more, visit www.diabetesmotion.com or www.shericolberg.com. You can also find some exercise programs geared towards people with diabetes by visiting Diabetes Motion Academy (www.DMAcademy.com).


Sheri R. Colberg, PhD, FACSM, is a Professor Emerita of Exercise Science at Old Dominion University and a former Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School. She is an internationally recognized authority on diabetes and exercise.