Health Risks Associated With A Lack Of Fitness - Understanding Fitness Part C

If all the benefits of fitness aren't motivation for you to get/keep fit, maybe the fear that comes from reading about the RISKS that are associated with a LACK of fitness will be.

If it were only that easy for us to GET MOTIVATED . . .

How many middle-aged people are suffering with knee, hip, and lower back problems?  It's reasonable to assume that most of these people aren't suffering because of time spent in a war or on a sports field, but from a lack of fitness.  Lower back pain is VERY common in the United States.  Know the main reason why?  Because Americans are OVERWEIGHT AND UNFIT.

PREVENT, ALLEVIATE, or REDUCE these kinds of pain by GETTING FIT.  And I don't mean start JOGGING OR WALKING.  Fitness requires SOME SORT OF STRENGTH TRAINING.  I'll post on that later, and it's probably not what you think.  In the meantime, if you have questions, ask me.

Health Risks Associated With A Lack of Fitness

            Being overweight has serious consequences, and not just cosmetically or aesthetically.  It kills.  God did not design us to be overweight.  Approximately three hundred thousand deaths per year are directly related to obesity.  Carrying just ten pounds too many can shorten life expectancy, reason enough for every good steward to begin taking action steps toward fitness.

            The first health risk is not a disease, but a law that allows all the other health risks to occur: the Law of Adaptation.  Over time, the body adapts to the stresses imposed on it by whatever environment it is in and by whatever situations it regularly faces. People all over the world have adapted to the climate, germs, altitude, workload, and food of their area.  With the Law of Adaptation, as the body adapts to certain stresses, it un-adapts to opposing stresses.  People from warm climates are not prepared for cold weather, and vice versa.  This is true of the indigenous people of each area, but it is also true in the short-term.  The author has a missionary friend from South Carolina.  He and his family served for three years in Africa, and upon returning home, it took them a while not to feel cold in the South Carolina summer, which generally means daily highs of around ninety degrees.  Describing the Law of Adaptation, Ben Lerner teaches, “In the case of exercise, if you participate in a regular fitness program, the forces you apply will cause you to adapt and get stronger, leaner, and healthier.  If you rarely move, however, the lack of forces will cause you to adapt and get weaker, fatter, and sicker.”

            Atrophy is a result of the Law of Adaptation principle of “use it or lose it.”  Atrophy is the loss of muscle.  Anyone who has broken an arm or leg has seen the results of atrophy.  When the cast is removed just a few weeks later, the muscles are always smaller because they could not be moved or exercised.  This is a “classic example of resource allocation.  If your body knows you are using crutches instead of quadriceps then it figures, ‘Forget this, I’ll put my energy elsewhere.’  This process of muscle loss does not occur just from a complete lack of movement.  Atrophy happens naturally as people age.  Kenneth Cooper warns that without a regular program of strength exercises,

a steady loss of muscle mass will inevitably occur after about age thirty.  By some estimates, there’s a 3 to 5 percent loss of muscle mass every ten years, beginning between age thirty to forty.  Some experts say that the total loss of muscle mass between ages thirty and seventy may be as high as 30 to 40 percent, or an average of 10 percent every ten years during this period.  After age seventy, as most people become more sedentary, the loss of muscle mass may accelerate.

            Atrophy is a general health hazard because it slows metabolism.  Metabolism will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter Three: The Connection Between Diet and Fitness, but since muscle burns calories, a loss of muscle results in a loss of calorie burning ability.  Unburned calories are stored as body fat.  As people lose muscle from a lack of exercise, they get weaker, but at the same time, they get fatter and heavier.  This combination of reduced strength and increased size brings an escalation of unfitness and health risks.  

While women naturally store excess fat on their hips and thighs, men naturally store it in the worst possible place: the abdomen.  Excess abdominal fat is associated with an increased risk of coronary artery disease, elevated triglycerides, hypertension, and cancer. Both unfit men and women are at a greater risk for a variety of diseases and health problems, including heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, high “bad” cholesterol (LDL), low “good” cholesterol (HDL – high density lipoprotein), and inflamed blood vessels.  

A definition of triglycerides is necessary because it is not as commonly understood as cholesterol.  Triglycerides are a type of fat found in blood.  The body converts any calories it does not need into triglycerides and stores them as fat cells.  Because triglycerides cannot dissolve in blood, they circulate throughout the body until they are stored.  High triglycerides may contribute to hardening of the arteries or thickening of the artery walls, which ultimately results in stroke or heart attack.

            Type II diabetes is another health risk from a lack of fitness, and to no surprise, it is most common in the United States.  Type I diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes, is the result of the pancreas not producing insulin.  It usually starts in childhood and may be present at birth, but it most often results from an autoimmune reaction in which the pancreas is affected by a virus.  Type II diabetes occurs when the pancreas produces too little insulin or when the body has built a resistance to insulin and is no longer as effective at using sugar for energy.  Type II diabetes represents 90 percent of all diabetes cases, and it is linked directly to poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle. Eighty percent of people with this disease are overweight.

            A sedentary individual who never exercises sometimes experiences higher blood sugar levels.  With a diet of excessive carbohydrates like refined sugar and processed flour, blood-sugar will start to rise simply because the body becomes resistant to the high amounts of sugar in the blood.  Insulin is no longer effective enough to keep up with all the excess carbohydrates, and the body has no other way to burn all the sugar in the blood.

            Exercise counters this problem.  Healthy, conditioned muscles have the capacity to quickly select their fuel source (sugar or fat) during times of fasting or feeding.  Untrained muscles are more insulin resistant and are unable to use sugar efficiently for energy even with insulin present.  Tom P. Hafer says, “Think of unexercised muscles as having less ability to use the energy source they have.  That is why the more you exercise the better you are at utilizing calories - and the less likely you are to develop Type II diabetes.” 

            Being overweight also raises the risk for several types of cancer, including esophageal cancer, uterine cancer, postmenopausal breast cancer, and kidney cancer.  Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States.  One possible link between these cancers and being overweight is that fat cells make hormones that might affect cell growth.

            Osteoporosis is a bone disease characterized by brittle and porous bones that break easily and result in such deformities as the outwardly curved upper spine known as “dowager’s hump.”  These conditions can be debilitating and even fatal.  By the age of seventy, a third of all women and a sixth of all men will suffer a hip fracture. Osteoporosis is best combated with strength training, not calcium supplements.  Strength training builds bone and “the most effective prevention of osteoporosis is early rigorous exercise that includes weight-bearing and some sort of weight lifting.”

            Carrying too much weight causes osteoarthritis, a joint disorder in which the tissues that protect joints, bones, and cartilage gradually wear away.  The most commonly affected areas are the knees, hips, and the lower back.  The more weight people carry, the more pressure they put on their joints and cartilage. 

For those who already suffer from arthritis, exercise is the remedy.  Once pain appears in any joint, exercising the joint to replenish it with nutrients should always be the first treatment choice.  Cartilage has a poor blood supply and gets its nutrients from synovial fluid inside the joint.  It is actual joint movement that allows the joint to become flexible.  Compression forces the joint fluids to rebuild and repair the joint.  Hafer compares this joint process to working taffy.  As cold and brittle taffy is worked (pulled), it warms up and becomes pliable.  The initial joint pain from exercise can cause a person to stop out of fear that something is wrong, but movement is normally exactly what the joint needs.

            Unfit and overweight bodies produce more cholesterol that can cause fat buildup in the liver.  The extra cholesterol often develops into solid clusters in the gallbladder known as gallstones.  The fatty accumulation in the liver causes inflammation and scarring, which can then cause cirrhosis, even among those who are not heavy drinkers. As a side note, gallstones often develop in people who lose a lot of weight quickly (more than three pounds per week) and people who try very low-calorie diets.  Therefore, modest, consistent weight loss of up to two pounds per week is the recommended goal.

            Sleep apnea is the final health risk to be discussed.  Sleep apnea is not the same as snoring or even heavy snoring; it occurs when a person stops breathing for short periods during sleep.  The results are daytime sleepiness, difficulty concentrating, increased blood pressure, and even heart failure.  Weight loss helps this condition by decreasing neck size and air passage inflammation.