Natural Way Health Blog

Biomarker 5 – Aerobic Capacity

Aerobic capacity is your body’s ability to process oxygen within a given time. That is:

1. to rapidly breathe amounts of air into the lungs for aeration of the blood;

2. to deliver large volumes of blood forcefully via the pumping action of the heart; and

3. to transport effectively oxygen to all parts of your body through the bloodstream.

To do these things efficiently, you need healthy lungs, a powerful heart, and a good vascular network. In short, the focus here is on your:

• heart

• lungs

• circulatory mechanisms

So how do you look after your heart:

Following a few simple rules can significantly decrease your chances of developing heart disease.

DIET

1. Limit intake of trans fats and hydrogenated oils found in margarine, fast food, fried food, Avoid Processed Foods

2. Limit refined sugar intake from cakes, cookies, candy, etc for a healthy sugar alternative try trehalose

3. Use extra virgin olive oil and garlic in cooking – they can lower cholesterol – so can a diet rich in plant stanols

4. Add Omega 3 Fatty Acids to your diet – the best source is Fish Oil – but make sure it is pure

EXERCISE

Developing a gentle but consistent exercise program will also lower your risk of heart disease.

1. Try to exercise 3-4 times per week, for at least a half hour at a time.

2. Keep your routine going, and start off slow.

3. Always stretch before and after training.

4. Keep yourself hydrated and rest between sets.

DEVELOP A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE

1. Stop smoking and avoid second hand smoke – both are major causes of heart disease.

2. Limit your intake of alcohol – excessive alcohol can deplete your body’s supply of vitamins and other nutrients.

3. Try to reduce stress and anxiety – they can lead to high blood pressure and other health conditions.

4. Keep your weight within recommended limits – obesity is a leading cause of heart disease.

FOUR BIOMARKERS

1. This may be contentious but it’s based on sound science. Cholesterol is an over emphasised biomarker and the evidence that artificially lower it with drugs is not supported in my opinion. You can lower cholesterol naturally but remember, only 20% of your cholesterol comes from what you eat, the other 80% is manufactured by your liver.

2. If your triglyceride (fat) levels are too high, lower your carbohydrate and refined sugar (sucrose actually) intake. Also, fish oil, Vitamin C, are safe natural ways to lower triglyceride levels.

3. If your homocysteine levels are high, you can easily normalize the situation by including B Vitamins in your diet:

1. Folic Acid – also known as Vitamin B9, folic acid can help the body produce the enzymes necessary to remove homocysteine from the blood.

2. Vitamin B6 – along with folic acid and Vitamin B12, helps reduce homocysteine levels.

3. Vitamin B12 – works with folic acid and Vitamin B6 to assist in homocysteine removal.

4. If your C Reactive Protein levels are high, this indicates inflammation in the body. A change of lifestyle is helpful here and Fish oil, ginger and MSM will help decrease inflammation naturally. Also a supplement containing peptide chains that reduce the level of Angio Tensin Converting Enzyme (ACE) are helpful.

HELPING THE LUNGS

1. Stop smoking

2. use your lungs – breath deeply – this simple tip is often overlooked

3. reduce the time spent in areas with airborne contamination – cities, smoky atmospheres

CIRCULATION

The 3 best things you can do to aid circulation are:

1. to drink more water

2. reduce your body fat content

3. exercise

Biomarker 1 – Benefits of good muscle and bone

A strong, toned musculature makes all sorts of wonderful contributions to your overall well-being. A high ratio of muscle to fat on the body:

• causes the metabolism to rise, meaning you can more easily burn body fat and alter your body composition even further in favour of beneficial muscle tissue.
• increases your aerobic capacity-and the health of your whole cardiovascular system-because you have more working muscles -consuming oxygen.
• triggers muscle to use more insulin, thus greatly reducing the chances you’ll ever develop diabetes.
• helps maintain higher levels of the beneficial HDL-cholesterol in your blood.

So how do you get better bones and muscles.

1. Simple exercise – walking is free but invaluable – you don’t need to join a gym and we can all do it
   • cyclic loading of bones is a key antidote to osteoporosis
   • eat plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables (note not cooked) for calcium
2. Simple strength training with small weights – can of beans is a good place to start
   • sit in a chair watching television and just do simple arm raises – holing the bean can and doing it slowly
   • again sitting – raise the leg horizontal and hold for a count of 5 and gently lower – repeat 10 times
   • remember it is not the size of the weights that’s important but the number of times you repeat it

Biomarker 2 – Strength

Here’s the problem:

As we age, we lose whole motor units (a measurement of muscle). In cross-sectional studies, it’s been estimated that over the 40-year span between age 30 and 70, people experience a 20 percent decrease in the number of motor units in their thigh, for example. Similar decreases are sustained in both large and small muscle groups all over our body.

Gradual muscle loss is the catalyst for a number of other age-related changes in your body. These adverse changes are . . .

• a slowdown in your metabolism
• a steady increase in body fat
• a declining aerobic capacity
• a reduced blood-sugar tolerance
• a continuing loss in bone density

So how do we prevent or reduce the loss of muscle.

• We exercise what we have – use it or lose it
• we give the body the nutrition it deserves and requires – protein, fats and oils, carbohydrates, Vitamins and Minerals
  • we either get these elements from our diets (good quality natural food) and supplement where necessary with concentrated food source supplements
• we take regular and frequent light exercise
  • walking,
  • breathing – deep cyclical breathing is hugely important and beneficial
  • mobility – exercise the joints and muscles through their full range of movement
  • control exercises – practice manual and physical tasks that require fine muscle control – knitting,
• make exercise a priority – 10 minutes walking twice a day is enough for most people to improve their health

Muscles will only strengthen if the exercise adds:

• Resistance e.g. adding more weight
• Number of repetitions with a particular weight
• Number of sets of the exercise

Again the saying Use it or lose it is just about where it is at.

Ageing – Biomarkers

In our last entry on the website we began talking about the 10 accepted biomarkers of ageing. We began to question whether we could delay the process of ageing and thereby life longer and more productive and enjoyable lives. Here are the 10 biomarkers again.

• Biomarker 1: Your Muscle Mass
• Biomarker 2: Your Strength
• Biomarker 3: Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
• Biomarker 4: Your Body Fat Percentage
• Biomarker 5: Your Aerobic Capacity
• Biomarker 6 Your Body’s Blood-Sugar Tolerance
• Biomarker 7: Your Cholesterol/HDL Ratio
• Biomarker 8: Your Blood Pressure
• Biomarker 9: Your Bone Density
• Biomarker 10:Your Body’s Ability to Regulate Its Internal Temperature

If we make some assumptions and conclude that we’ll live relatively free from illness until the age of 65 years and from that point we begin to experience a growing level of disability due to ageing and illness. We may experience 20 years or more of life after the age of 65 years and we’ll  spend 20 years of our lives in the disability zone.

What happens today for most people is that they begin to rely more and more heavily on pharmaceutical drugs to manage the symptoms of physical dysfunction or illness as they get older.What would happen if instead of reliance on pharmaceuticals we focussed on these 10 biomarkers of ageing and sought to improve them. The evidence from around the world is becoming clearer every day. The earlier we begin to address these biomarkers with natural food, exercise and water (and supplementation where required) there is every probability that we can extend the point at which we enter the disability zone by many years.

A recent study published in the Public Library of Medical Science (January 2008) found that basic healthy habits can add up to 14 years to your life – delaying the entrance into the disability zone by many years. Their focus was on cessation of smoking, eating 5 servings of fruit and vegetables, moderate exercise and moderate alcohol consumption. It was nothing extreme.

How Old Are You Really?

Sometimes it make sense to question what we know (or think we know). How often have we heard the saying about “you’re just getting old”. When you go to the doctors and they turn around and say very simply “oh! It’s your age catching up with you”. Those aches and pains that you wake up in the morning with are they just showing you’re getting old or are they simply a symptom of something out of balance.In these next few days we are going to provoke, unashamedly, a discussion about ageing and if we can stop it. Many will disagree, some may get angry, some will dismiss us as crackpots and some will learn things that will change the way that they think as a result may change the outcome of their latter years.

So to start with but look at the 10 biomarkers of ageing proposed by the medical community:

Biomarker 1: Your Muscle Mass

Biomarker 2: Your Strength

Biomarker 3: Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

Biomarker 4: Your Body Fat Percentage

Biomarker 5: Your Aerobic Capacity

Biomarker 6: Your Body’s Blood-Sugar Tolerance

Biomarker 7: Your Cholesterol/HDL Ratio

Biomarker 8: Your Blood Pressure

Biomarker 9: Your Bone Density

Biomarker 10:Your Body’s Ability to Regulate Its Internal Temperature

A continuing controversy is whether there exist processes of ageing per se, which can be identified and studied independently of age-related disease. It is clear that there are age-related risk factors for disease, and that these overlap with risk factors for ageing, but there is disagreement about whether diseases to which older persons are vulnerable should be considered merely by-products of ageing, or an essential component of the ageing processes.

In response to “How old are you” He would say, “How you suppose to answer if you didn’t know how old you was?” Paige never knew his exact chronological age because he was born before good records were kept. He used to tell people to use his performance on the pitcher’s mound to estimate his age. But that was almost impossible because Paige’s long heyday as a leading pitcher stretched from the 1920’s to 1950’s.

If you didn’t know your age how would you feel?

I.