Skip to main content

Which Exercise is Best for you?

Image
By
Exercise and diet are the two most important pillars of good health, and both have as many options and controversies as there are people to give advice on them.  Choosing an exercise regime that fits your specific requirement could be a good starting point for a long term investment in well-being.

 You first need to take stock of your current status and then your requirements.

How do you assess your present physical state? Start with the following:
  1. How old are you?
  2. Do you have any medical problems (heart, knees, anaemia etc)?
  3. Are you a strong willed person who can go it alone or do you need company and entertainment?
  4. What are your constraints (no playground, unsafe roads, no gym nearby etc) 

The role of Age:
In general, the younger the age, more vigorous should be the exercise. A 16 year old, for instance, should play a vigorous out-door game, sprint and run, undertake long distance cycling and so on, but a 60 year old would have to choose from other milder options.
A quick reckoner for cardio-vascular exercise that takes age into account is to target a heart rate of 60% of the maximal heart rate (MHR).

Apply this formula to decide how vigorous your exercise should be: Subtract your age from 220. That gives you the MHR for your age. Now target a heart rate that is 60% of that, and keep on for 30 minutes.
For example, for a 20 year old youth, the MHR is 200. He should undertake vigorous exercise such as running, so that his heart rate reaches 120 (60% of 200). For a 50 year old man, the MHR would be 170, and the heart rate should reach around 100 per minute.

Warming up.Give yourself 5-10 minutes of gradual warming up before you push your heart rate up. This is especially important for people who are above 40 years and who are getting started on an exercise regime.

How to calculate your heart rate while exercising? Most treadmills have a meter that tells you. There are special gadgets that you can wear on your wrist for detecting heart rate. Another simple way is to sense “palpitations” and pant while taking your brisk walk for example.

Cooling down is just as important as warming up. After your 30 minutes of gentle panting and palpitations are over, reduce your speed and taper off the speed gradually, allowing your body to cool off over 10 minutes.

Medical Problems
Exercise is not forbidden for those who have medical problems, but have to be specially tailored to their needs and constraints. An elderly patient with chronic heart failure may, for instance, be able to take just a slow walk for 10 minutes as advised by his cardiologist. Those with creaky knees find it difficult to run on the treadmill as the brunt of their excess weight makes their lower joints cry more. They might do well with “rowing” exercises that spares the knees. Your doctor and a good gym instructor can help you choose the right form for you.

If you have now decided to start with exercise and set your goals, watch this space next week for helping you choose your exercise regime.

As published in HT City ( Hindustan Times) dated 16th February, 2014.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Food Fads in Liver Disorders

By
In an attempt at trying to do well to those they love, spouses and parents often enforce diets on patients of liver diseases that often turn out to be detrimental. The commonest food fad is pale insipid boiled cabbage being doled out to nauseous patients suffering from hepatitis that makes them puke even more.  The liver, in a way, is a buzzing manufacturing unit that requires lots of energy to keep its multiple functions going. And it derives all this from the food we eat. During disease, such as during an attack of jaundice, when many of the liver cells get killed, the liver attemptsdamage control by trying to regenerate quickly. For its cells to multiply however, it requires a generous supply of energy that comes from carbohydrates, and protein, the building block for its cells and tissues. Boiled green vegetables unfortunately have neither of these. Hence the situation often progresses to that of a starved liver unable to recuperate due to cut-off food supply.
2 comments
Read more

Bad Dreams, Disturbed Sleep

By
  A good night’s sleep, so essential to rest your body and mind, and restore ‘energy” and vitality, is becoming a casualty for many these days. Last week a 58 year old lady complained that she woke up with a startle in the middle of the night dreaming of “drugs”, something she had never been exposed to all her life. Another reported a nightmare in which he felt someone was “strangulating” him by tightening something around his neck, till he woke up feeling choked! Yet another reported dreaming that he was in an ICU of a hospital with PPE draped figures surrounding his bed while he was being prepared to be hooked to a ventilator. Bad dreams can be disturbing to say the least. One wakes up with a startle or in sweat, feeling disturbed and uneasy, and feeling drained. The mood in the morning is usually uneasy and snappy. Creative thinking has usually gone for a toss…postponed to yet another day when one feels more cheerful and positive.   Several factors could be contributing to “
1 comment
Read more

The Doctor’s Dress

By
The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to get closer to thei
2 comments
Read more