We all know exercise is healthy and there is a ton of benefits which are listed on countless sites. However there are still a lot of people that find it diffiuclt if not impossible to make exercise a habit. I get it. Exercise is an uphill battle. Exercises can be difficult, even stretching can seem like an impossible task. Always trying to lift more, run faster, push your limits in each session.
There are two benefits though, that you simply can’t ignore. And that is independent of your age. The younger you are the more important exercise is.
Healthy bones and bone density is currently considered to be one of the key longevity markers. Bone density helps
Bone is an amazing tissue. Bones have the same strength as cast iron, but achieves this while remaining as light as wood.
Adult bone actually continues to expand, although very slowly. Bones also continually undergoes remodeling, replacing old bone with new bone. Ordinary activity causes microscopic cracks in the bone, and these are dissolved and replaced with new bone. Remodeling also allows bone to respond to changes in mechanical forces. Thus, bones are a totally living thing in our body!
It should be pretty apparent by know of how important it is keep our bones healthy and dense. But unfortunately we are fighting against time. Already from our 30s the bone density starts declining. The decline is even more rapid for female as you can see below from Fig1.
This is bad news. Imagine, as calcium leaves the bones in the process of osteoporosis, it builds up instead in blood vessel walls, leading to dangerous calcified plaque deposits. Those deposits can rupture, causing an immediate arterial blockage and producing a sudden heart attack or catastrophic stroke. It is this close interrelationship between bone health and total body health that is ground breaking!
Additionally, osteocalcin acts in muscle to increase the ability to produce ATP, the fuel that allows us to exercise. While in the brain, it regulates the secretion of most neurotransmitters that are needed to have memory. The circulating levels of osteocalcin declines in humans around mid-life, which is roughly the time when these physiological functions, such as memory and the ability to exercise, begin to decline.Osteocalcin seems to be able to reverse manifestations of ageing in the brain and in muscle.
But is it not all bad news. Exercise is the best way to stimulate your bones.
Performing weight-bearing and resistance training exercises can increase bone formation during bone growth and protect bone health in older adults, including those with low bone density
Athletes, that engage in high-impact sports, have significantly higher total Bone Density and there is a close correlation on the type of sport activity in achieving a high peak bone mass and reducing osteoporosis risk.
Physical activity, particularly weight-bearing exercise, is thought to provide the mechanical stimuli or “loading” important for the maintenance and improvement of bone health, whereas physical inactivity has been implicated in bone loss and its associated health costs.
Both aerobic and resistance training exercise can provide weight-bearing stimulus to bone, yet research indicates that resistance training may have a more profound site specific effect than aerobic exercise.
What is important to consider
According to research published in 2015 by researchers from Brigham Young University, some exercises offer greater benefits than others: for example jumping.
Strength training and putting stress on your bones is the number one thing you can do to promote bone health and bone density.
The brain has many different functions, but most of us connect the brain mostly with the act of thinking.
Most of us take many of our bodies functions for granted. Let’s take coordination for example. We think that walking or balancing on one leg is an act of muscle recruitment. However we don’t often think that every action in our body works in coordinated manner. 90% of the body’s coordination activities is around movement. The whole body works together to make you walk and every movement is ultemetely controlled by our brain. We tend to forget that since certain simple movements are now habits which which we perform on a daily basis, are engraved in our brain and are considered low-impact.
Have you trying to balance on your hands? Handstands is a very fancy exercise which is a very high-impact activity and one that seems impossible to some and requires constant repetition. This repetition is only not required in order to train the muscles but mostly to build the right neuro-muscular connections. Nerves have cells called neurons. Neurons carry messages from the brain via the spinal cord. The neurons that carry these messages to the muscles are called motor neurons. Each motor neuron ending sits very close to a muscle fibre. Where they sit together is called a neuromuscular junction. The motor neurons can release a chemical, which is picked up by the muscle fibre. This tells the muscle fibre to contract, which makes the muscles move. It all starts from the brain!
We all know that a muscle injury can lead to that muscle to atrophy when it is immobilized. What you might not know is that the same muscle injury will cause your brain to atrophy as well. The lack of signalling, due to lack of movement, will cause certain areas in your brain to start de-generating.
Any time you move there signals that communicate back to the brain to help it know what is going-on. There are so many signals back and forth all the time. Touch, Pressuse, skin stretching, joint motion, tension, change in muscle length.
You now know that signalling is keeping our brain healthy. But did you know that with enough stimulus we can create new brain cells?!
There are certain hormones like BDNF and HGH that help to create new cells, create new synapses, make new brain cell connections and learn new things. There is a whole science behind how hormones like BDNF help with neuroplasticity.
And the key here, is that you make these hormones, in proportion of the intensity of the exercise. So walking, hiking for example are not intense enough to provoke your body to get better, to learn new things and create new brain cells. You always need to challenge your body and brain, so it has a reason to get better. Efficient training depends on an efficient neuromuscular communication, a good brain-muscle connection. In other words, you need to focus and concentrate on your training with your whole body; mentally and physically. It is important to make sure that your brain is able to activate your targeted muscle movements. Then, you need to focus your mind on contracting your target muscles rather than for example just thinking about the weight you want to lift. Doing weight lifting, HIIT, sprinting are the type of activities which carry such an internsity that require from your mind to be also focused, create new connection and help your body to get better.
Strength training and movement promote brain health.
From the above it should be already clear how important is exercise for our longevity and health. Another important to takeaway is that the journey of health starts before one begins having issues and even in our 20s. Building the right foundation when still young is critical. As we age it gets more difficult to increase bone density for example, and if we don’t take care of ourselves our body will find it very difficult to keep up.
Start exercising today even if you don’t have issues, even if you are in your 20s. Build the right foundation for your health and longevity!