Cancer Articles (Dr. S.N White)

How do I choose an aerobic exercise program? If you have heart disease, are at high risk for heart disease, or have not been exercising, it is important to start slowly and build up your exercise program gradually. Gentle stretches and short walks are a good way to begin. As you begin to feel stronger, you can lengthen your walks and incorporate some uphill segments. If you decide to take the stairs instead of the elevator, take them slowly at first, resting whenever you need to catch your breath. In choosing a form of exercise, keep in mind that in order to be aerobic it must be regular and rhythmic, require an accelerated breathing rate over the duration of the exercise, and use the large muscles of the arms and/or legs. It is an advantage to practice more than one kind of regular exercise, since different muscle groups are toned and stretched by different exercises. There are hundreds of exercise options, and the key to picking the “best” one for you is to pick one or several ...

Exercise has lots of benefits, but there are some risks. How much or how little you should do depends on your diagnosis. If you have survived a heart attack or have had heart surgery, you should first talk to your health professional about supervised exercise in an organized cardiac rehabilitation program. This chapter will build on what you learn in cardiac rehabilitation and provide you with tools to maintain a safe and healthy exercise program . Whatever the severity of your heart disease, you should discuss exercise with your physician or health professional before beginning any program. In addition, your physician may have prescribed medication such as beta-blockers  that limits the body’s ability to increase the heart rate. (Not all drugs affect your ability to exercise or to increase your heart rate.) When your physician prescribes any medication, discuss how exercise might affect it. If exercise is supposed to be so good for you, why do some young athletes die suddenly...

There are three types of exercise: aerobic, resistance, and stretching. The word aerobic comes from the Greek word for air, and it refers to any regular, rhythmic exercise using the legs or arms that requires an increased breathing rate over a period of time. Aerobic exercise is what is needed to strengthen the cardiovascular system. Some aerobic activities are • swimming • fast walking •jogging • bicycle riding Resistance exercise, important for building muscle and keeping it strong, draws largely on energy stored in muscles and does not require nearly as much oxygen. Resistance exercise involves activities in which the muscles meet resistance, such as in weight training or muscle conditioning. Lifting light weights with many repetitions versus using heavy weights with fewer repetitions will strengthen muscles at a steadier rate with less risk of injury. You can begin doing resistance exercises at home by lifting commonplace objects such as soup cans. Resistance exercise shou...

• Start slowly. Too much, too soon, too fast can lead to medical problems, fatigue, and other negative consequences, as well as increase chances of injury. • Choose activities that are pleasurable. If you get bored or the activity is inconvenient, you may not exercise regularly Remember, there are many exercise options, and it’s okay to experiment. • Choose a variety of activities. Vary your routine walk one day, swim another day. • Set goals that work for you gradually incorporate them into your daily activity. • Keep an exercise diary at first to see if you have met your goals. • Schedule exercise times. Consider them a commitment, like a business or social appointment. Make these times convenient. • Get some support. Enlisting a friend or companion is often helpful, particularly whenas happens to everyone motivation sags or interest lags. •Join a walking club. It’s a good way to meet people who share your health oriented goals. • Get expert help. Many gyms, communi...

Exercise may be healthy, but how will it slow down or reverse my heart disease?  Studies have shown that regular exercise lowers the risk of death from a second heart attack ; there are about half as many heart attacks among people who exercise, as among those who don’t. Studies also show that heart disease risk factors such as blood cholesterol, triglycerides, lipids, high blood pressure, and obesity are lowered in people who get regular aerobic exercise. Angina attacks decrease in heart disease patients who follow an exercise program. Exercise has also been shown to improve glucose tolerance and retard the development of non-insulin-dependent diabetes. Exercise is also good for the heart muscle itself. When you do regular aerobic exercise , the heart beats faster, indicating that it is working harder that is, you are exercising the heart muscle. This causes an increase in the size of the muscle, and the amount of blood flowing to it. As the muscle strengthens, it can pump ...

What will I gain by exercising? • Studies have shown that regular aerobic exercise lowers triglycerides, increases HDL (the good cholesterol), and sometimes reduces LDL (the bad cholesterol). • Over time, exercise can increase the size of the coronary arteries and the capillaries that supply blood and oxygen to the heart. Some evidence exists that exercise may even promote the formation of extra blood vessels to help compensate for those that are blocked. • Exercise helps control blood pressure. If your blood pressure is normal, physical activity will help it stay that way. If it is elevated, exercise can help lower it. •Exercise helps control blood sugar and prevent non-insulindependent diabetes. • Exercise helps prevent blood clotting in arteries and veins. • Exercise improves your overall quality of life. As your heart works more efficiently, it does so with less effort. You’ll find you have more energy. • Exercise helps with weight loss and weight control . A phys...

Why is exercise so important?  The heart, like our other muscles, needs to be kept in good condition. The regular pumping that keeps us alive for most people this means blood pumping in and out of the heart about 60 to 80 times every minute is not enough to keep the muscle tuned and the coronary arteries clean. Tuning up the heart is simple: you need to increase its number of beats or pumping cycles at least a few times a week for a minimum of twenty to thirty minutes each time. If you are not well enough to engage in strenuous activity, even some easy physical activity like walking for a reasonable length of time will help the tune-up process. Using muscles for physical tasks was a daily necessity in primitive societies. Humans were able to endure long bouts of exercise and exposure to heat and cold while seeking and gathering plants, hunting, and fishing. Skeletal analyses of primitive human remains indicate that the early human was an extraordinarily active creature whose...

Can exercise reduce stress?  Physical activity is a good way to reduce stress and depression. From walking to swimming, no matter how gentle or how challenging, physical activity is a great healer. Most of us know from experience that exercise makes us feel better psychologically, but scientific support for this belief appeared in Cardiac Rehabilitation : Clinical Practice Guideline, published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 1995. A panel of experts reviewed various studies and concluded that “exercise training enhances measures of psychological and social functioning . . . including measures of emotional stress.” It is known that exercise stimulates production of endorphins, which promote a sense of well-being in the body. Find some time for some physical activity, even if only for a few minutes or for a short walk, each and every day.

It's always better to have a companion for safety's sake, as well as for company. You especially shouldn't do anything potentially hazardous like skiing or swimming alone. Still, there isn't always somebody around, and a diabetic does always need exercise. There's no reason why you can't take a walk or jog or ride your bicycle or play a round of golf by yourself. Just be sure you never leave the house without enough carbohydrate to see you through. Enough is the word here. Take along a lot more than you think you can possibly need. Then you'll never have to curtail your fun. Here are dietitian Michael Wedman's guidelines for judging how much to eat before different types of sports. 1/2 hour bike riding, walking fast, roller skating = 1 fruit added before or during the exercise. 1 hour bike riding, running, walking fast, roller skating, basketball, tennis, racquetball = 1 bread + 1 fruit added before the exercise. 1 hour canoeing, skiing, swimmin...

To some extent, that depends on what you did to get tired. If you're weary from your job as steeplejack or longshoreman, or if you're a housewife who's cleaned the whole house or galloped after a four-year-old all day, you've already had a great deal of exercise. Getting more is not that critical for you. On the other hand, if you're tired from a long day of sedentary office tensions or sitting in the car, then you need exercise for more reasons than diabetic ones, and you should clamp your jaw and force yourself, at least initially. Just as the appetite comes with the eating, the energy and enthusiasm for exercise come with the exercising. Often the fatigue you feel at the end of a day comes from a lack of physical activity rather than from too much of it. If you find yourself too tired to exercise and it's not a true physical tiredness, you may go to bed and find yourself too keyed up and tense to sleep. The next day you've got a lack-ofsleep tiredness ...

What kind of exercise should i do for diabetes? What kind of exercise do you like? Exercise should be fun. That's the only way to be sure you'll keep doing it. As a diabetic you have enough chores in your life without turning exercise into another one. If you want to rate exercises, though, the ones that are best for you are the aerobic or endurance kind: brisk walking, jogging, running, swimming, cross country skiing, biking (either on the real thing or in bad weather on an exercycle), rowing, jumping rope. Dancing is also a wonderful endurance exercise. There are now even some special aerobic dance classes designed especially to build up your cardiovascular system and endurance. But really, as we said, exercise is play and should be fun. Try to acquire a skill you enjoy like tennis or bowling or golf, even if it isn't an endurance sport. We find that if you get really involved in a nonendurance sport, you tend to do some endurance exercising in order to what else?...

Do I have to exercise? A better question would be, "Isn't it terrific that such an enjoyable activity as exercise is a basic part of diabetes therapy?" The answer to both questions is yes. Although exercise is often a neglected area in diabetes care, getting the right amount of exercise is just as important as following a good eating plan if not more important. Weve heard it said that if you had to make a choice between eating junk food and exercising or eating a perfectly healthy diet and being immobile, you'd be healthier eating the junk food and exercising. Of course, a diabetic doesn't have to make that choice in fact, can't make it. You need both exercise and good food for optimum health and blood sugar control. Exercise is almost a magic formula for diabetics. If you're too thin usually the lean insulin-dependent types it will help you gain needed pounds by causing you to utilize your food better. Since it acts like an "invisible insulin...