July 29, 2024 • 13 mins
In this episode, Dr. Paul Anderson delves into the concept of "Movement as Medicine," highlighting how physical activity can be a powerful tool for improving health and well-being. He covers:
4o
- Health Benefits: An overview of the myriad benefits of regular movement, including improved cardiovascular health, enhanced mental clarity, and better mood regulation.
- Types of Movement: Discussion on various forms of physical activity, from aerobic exercises and strength training to flexibility workouts and functional movements.
- Chronic Disease Management: How regular movement can help manage and even prevent chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and arthritis.
- Mental Health: The positive impact of exercise on mental health, including its role in reducing anxiety, depression, and stress.
- Creating a Routine: Tips for integrating movement into daily life, with advice on setting realistic goals, finding activities you enjoy, and staying motivated.
- Safety and Adaptation: Guidance on how to start an exercise routine safely, particularly for those with existing health conditions or those new to physical activity.
- Holistic Approach: The importance of combining movement with other healthy lifestyle choices, such as proper nutrition, adequate sleep, and stress management.
- Success Stories: Inspirational anecdotes and case studies of individuals who have transformed their health through regular physical activity.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Good day, Welcome to Medicine Health. I'm doctor Paul and
we're doing a series on helpful therapies. This part of
the series is called Movement as Medicine. So the first
little section we want to go into in Movement as
Medicine is resistance type of exercise versus cardio type exercise.
(00:27):
Just kind of talk about the differences between them and
why maybe a healthcare provider might you know, ask that
you do one or the other or both of these. Now, obviously,
for most people, if you're you know, able to move
around and you know, do things, etc. It's nice to
have some sort of a combination of these, as you'll see.
(00:52):
But the many of the experts in the world of
you know, exercise, physiology all that are are now saying,
you know, a lot of common sense things like, you know,
we have one body, and if we do one type,
we're actually getting some of the other that might be shifted,
you know, in proportion. But you actually, you know, because
(01:15):
your body is not disconnected from your muscles, it knows
what you're doing. So the idea with cardio is that
you're increasing your heart rate and you are getting some
sort of what they call aerobic exercise right, So, and
(01:35):
there's a whole type of exercises called aerobics, and that's
not limited to just that. So you could do that
by walking very fast, or running, walking on a treadmill,
riding a bike, anything that gets your heart rate moving.
If you went out and you played tennis or basketball
(01:56):
and you're running around and your heart rates up, you're
getting some sort of cardio workout. Now, there is a
thing physiological principle that is called the anaerobic threshold in
your body, and that is a threshold at which your
respiratory rate starts to rise. Now, the idea of aerobic
(02:23):
metabolism is that your cells are receiving the nutrient substrates
that they run on, the energy processes run on, and
when they're in aerobic metabolism, they can take oxygen in
obviously as they do and work the oxygen and work
the substrates from your nutrients all the way down through
(02:46):
for example, glycolysis and then into the mitochondria. And once
you get into mitochondria, whether you had glucose go in
or whether you had fats go into the mitochondria through
a separate pathway, you also need oxygen in there. To
run oxfas and create energy. So there is a place
(03:08):
where you hit a threshold, and that threshold is based
on how well trained your body is. So if you
have an aerobic training, whether it's a fast walk or
biking or running or whatever it is that you do,
you notice in the beginning it's not just your muscles
are kind of tired, but also you breathe heavier, maybe
(03:30):
your heart rate goes up more, et cetera. And part
of that, especially with your breathing, is when you hit
the anaerobic threshold, which is where your cells no longer
have enough oxygen going in to fulfill the needs to
go all the way through sake like coolysis and then
into oxaus in the mitochondria, they send signals out and
(03:53):
you get a sort of a little mild acidosis that
goes on, and that's your anaerobic threshold, and thats your
brain to regulate your breathing up so that you get
more air in. Okay, the longer you train, the further
out your anaerobic threshold goes. So if it used to be,
(04:14):
you know, you would get winded and out of breath
immediately or within the first minute or two. The longer
you train, the further out that will go. Right. Now,
what benefits physically would say cardio do well. If you're
looking for immediate calorie burn, you've got an immediate calorie
burn of about twenty percent higher than say resistance exercise,
(04:38):
which is good to know. The thing is is that
aerobic training or cardio as we like to call it,
the calorie burn is during the session. There's not a
lot of holdover in metabolic terms. Another thing that cardio
does is increases the endorphins in your brain, which are
(05:02):
sort of local chemicals, local little messengers that help with
a feeling of well being, and you know that sort
of thing, so it can improve your mood. And then
there is also a decrease in central and peripheral stress signaling.
And that's whether it's from physical stress or mental emotional stress.
(05:25):
As we've talked about before, they're all perceived the same
way by your body, and so as you go along
these benefits can be felt by your body. You first
are going to notice that your aerobic threshold is longer
and longer. It takes you longer to get winded. You
(05:47):
can do more mileage whatever way you're measuring things. But
a lot of people also just say, you know, I
just feel better after I do a workout. Well, part
of that is the end orphan dump. Part of it
is your stress system kind of toning down. Now. I've
had people patients tell me early in their exercise bouts
(06:10):
that they got actually agitated when they were you know,
before they were really well trained, early on, et cetera.
And what will happen is so that doesn't sound like
endorphins and happy chemicals in the brain and everything, They
actually got like ragefull and angry and all this stuff. Well,
early on, before you're very well trained, what happens is
(06:34):
that your body doesn't understand why you're doing this physical activity.
Your body just responds to what your body and your
brain are doing. And so one reason you know, just
biologically that our heart rate might go up fast and
our skeletal muscle may start to move fast, is that
(06:55):
you know a bear is chasing us, or someone's trying
to kill us or something, and so you're body has
a response to that, especially when you're not very well
trained in cardio or resistance, et cetera. And that is
to release adrenaline. Also knows epinephrine, so that it liberates
substrates for energy and things of that nature in case
(07:18):
you have to run away from a bear or fight
someone off or whatever. Now, if you're not you're just
out for a jog and all of a sudden you
feel like this and a rageful feeling or whatever. Shaky
that will go away. Now there's a couple other things
that mitigate it. If you've been fasting and you haven't
eaten enough, sometimes that'll happen sooner. But a lot of
(07:39):
it is just getting your body use to the idea
of training so that then your body kind of goes
into this mode of, oh, this is that thing that
we do. We're not running from a bear or anything.
We're just going out and getting on the treadmill or
we're going for a hike or whatever is that we're doing.
So a lot of that is about training to get
to like the happy brain chemistry, et cetera. Now, cardio
(08:01):
is one big area of helping your body to work better,
but then resistance training is more specifically trying to move
your larger muscles, so that would be armed, shoulder, chest,
legs especially, and then your core muscles that hold your
body up and so resistance training can be done with
(08:21):
all of those and that's very, very good for you
for a few reasons that we'll talk about. One of
the benefits of resistance training is that you have a
longer calorie burn. So while cardio will burn up to
twenty percent more calories immediately, it kind of stops after
(08:43):
your cardio event is over, and resistance will do things
biologically to your muscles so that you have a metabolism change.
It lasts after the workout, which is very important, so
the calorie burn can go on longer. The other thing
is that your metabolism can upregulate with skeletal muscle activity.
(09:10):
Resistance work for one or two days after you have
a workout, so your metabolism actually goes up. People are
always worried about their slow metabolism, or they're recovering from
a disease and they have slow metabolism. One way to
get your metabolism back in the game and to kind
of kick it up a notch is to do some
resistive exercise. Now, in our series on Movement as Medicine,
(09:33):
we're going to talk about, you know, healing up after
injuries and other stuff like that, so we'll save that
for that little section there. The other thing that resistance
training does is increase your muscle mass. Now, it turns
out that you don't have to be big and giant
and you know, have giant muscles all over to have
(09:53):
an increase in muscle mass. That makes a biological and
a health difference for you. What we're finding now now
is that people that can work their skeletal muscles even
a little more than they used to have chemistry shifts
in their body that become less inflammatory, more prone to
(10:15):
the right kind of immune chemistry, more prone to resistance
from disease, more prone to all sorts of good things.
And the important part about that is, yes, you'll get
some of that with cardio, but you actually get more
with resistance exercise. So then the next question that people
(10:35):
often come up with is they'll say, well, you know,
I'm not a powerlifter, or you know, I've been sick
or i've whatever, or I'm just changing my life now
and i want to get more active. Well, one of
the best things that you can do is to move
the biggest muscles that you can up to the point
that you tolerated. And it turns out that the major
(10:58):
large muscle groups in your in your legs. So even
a sedentary person by starting to stand and sit down more,
for example, or somebody maybe who's a little bit trained
or does a lot of cardio and they start to
do a little bit of leg work and some squats
and things like that, and then if you can do
(11:19):
the other bigger muscles, that's great, But the legs have
the most potent impact on resistive exercise initially because of
the biggest massive muscles. Then you go to your core
muscles and your arms, et cetera, so you don't have
to do a lot. It's different for that effect to
come about. So you get a metabolism increase, you get
(11:39):
a longer caloric burn, and you also wind up with
more muscle mass as you go along. Now there is
the idea that muscle itself, muscles metabolism is actually medicine.
That's going to be our next topic that we're going
to talk about, So we won't get too much into
(12:01):
metabolism here except to say that by moving your body
and by working the bigger muscles, you're doing resistive exercise,
and that is very helpful for your metabolic health for
your long term health. Resistant disease ET cetera. And even
in things such as you know, some bad infections and cancer, etc.
(12:24):
You can have a better recovery if you're doing some
kind of resistive type exercise. Now, when we get to
recovery exercise, we'll get into the details of that, because obviously,
if you've just been through surgery or you've been through
some other problem, you're not going to go right back out,
you know, start powerlifting or something like that right away.
(12:46):
You have to kind of work into it. So we'll
get into that too. So what about you know, if
you had to make a choice and you had to
do one or the other, what would help. Well, many
experts that I've read and I would agree with this,
because the body is not disconnected. We'll say, do resistive
exercise because your heart rate is still going to go up.
(13:08):
Your brain knows what's going on. Now. When I was young,
many many decades ago, and I was an athlete, when
we were training, they would always say, you know, you
got to do a cardio portion and a wait portion
and keep things in balance. That's probably ideal, but you're
going to get a little bit resistive exercise doing cardio,
(13:28):
and you're going to get a little cardio, doing resistive exercise,
but really the resistive exercise and its impact on your
muscle as medicine for your body. It's most important. All right,
I'm doctor Paul Anderson. Please like, share, subscribe, hit the
notifications because sometimes we get marginalized on the apps and
we'll get onto our next next section here coming right up.
Good day, Welcome to Medicine Health. I'm doctor Paul and
we're doing a series on helpful therapies. This part of
the series is called Movement as Medicine. So the first
little section we want to go into in Movement as
Medicine is resistance type of exercise versus cardio type exercise.
(00:27):
Just kind of talk about the differences between them and
why maybe a healthcare provider might you know, ask that
you do one or the other or both of these. Now, obviously,
for most people, if you're you know, able to move
around and you know, do things, etc. It's nice to
have some sort of a combination of these, as you'll see.
(00:52):
But the many of the experts in the world of
you know, exercise, physiology all that are are now saying,
you know, a lot of common sense things like, you know,
we have one body, and if we do one type,
we're actually getting some of the other that might be shifted,
you know, in proportion. But you actually, you know, because
(01:15):
your body is not disconnected from your muscles, it knows
what you're doing. So the idea with cardio is that
you're increasing your heart rate and you are getting some
sort of what they call aerobic exercise right, So, and
(01:35):
there's a whole type of exercises called aerobics, and that's
not limited to just that. So you could do that
by walking very fast, or running, walking on a treadmill,
riding a bike, anything that gets your heart rate moving.
If you went out and you played tennis or basketball
(01:56):
and you're running around and your heart rates up, you're
getting some sort of cardio workout. Now, there is a
thing physiological principle that is called the anaerobic threshold in
your body, and that is a threshold at which your
respiratory rate starts to rise. Now, the idea of aerobic
(02:23):
metabolism is that your cells are receiving the nutrient substrates
that they run on, the energy processes run on, and
when they're in aerobic metabolism, they can take oxygen in
obviously as they do and work the oxygen and work
the substrates from your nutrients all the way down through
(02:46):
for example, glycolysis and then into the mitochondria. And once
you get into mitochondria, whether you had glucose go in
or whether you had fats go into the mitochondria through
a separate pathway, you also need oxygen in there. To
run oxfas and create energy. So there is a place
(03:08):
where you hit a threshold, and that threshold is based
on how well trained your body is. So if you
have an aerobic training, whether it's a fast walk or
biking or running or whatever it is that you do,
you notice in the beginning it's not just your muscles
are kind of tired, but also you breathe heavier, maybe
(03:30):
your heart rate goes up more, et cetera. And part
of that, especially with your breathing, is when you hit
the anaerobic threshold, which is where your cells no longer
have enough oxygen going in to fulfill the needs to
go all the way through sake like coolysis and then
into oxaus in the mitochondria, they send signals out and
(03:53):
you get a sort of a little mild acidosis that
goes on, and that's your anaerobic threshold, and thats your
brain to regulate your breathing up so that you get
more air in. Okay, the longer you train, the further
out your anaerobic threshold goes. So if it used to be,
(04:14):
you know, you would get winded and out of breath
immediately or within the first minute or two. The longer
you train, the further out that will go. Right. Now,
what benefits physically would say cardio do well. If you're
looking for immediate calorie burn, you've got an immediate calorie
burn of about twenty percent higher than say resistance exercise,
(04:38):
which is good to know. The thing is is that
aerobic training or cardio as we like to call it,
the calorie burn is during the session. There's not a
lot of holdover in metabolic terms. Another thing that cardio
does is increases the endorphins in your brain, which are
(05:02):
sort of local chemicals, local little messengers that help with
a feeling of well being, and you know that sort
of thing, so it can improve your mood. And then
there is also a decrease in central and peripheral stress signaling.
And that's whether it's from physical stress or mental emotional stress.
(05:25):
As we've talked about before, they're all perceived the same
way by your body, and so as you go along
these benefits can be felt by your body. You first
are going to notice that your aerobic threshold is longer
and longer. It takes you longer to get winded. You
(05:47):
can do more mileage whatever way you're measuring things. But
a lot of people also just say, you know, I
just feel better after I do a workout. Well, part
of that is the end orphan dump. Part of it
is your stress system kind of toning down. Now. I've
had people patients tell me early in their exercise bouts
(06:10):
that they got actually agitated when they were you know,
before they were really well trained, early on, et cetera.
And what will happen is so that doesn't sound like
endorphins and happy chemicals in the brain and everything, They
actually got like ragefull and angry and all this stuff. Well,
early on, before you're very well trained, what happens is
(06:34):
that your body doesn't understand why you're doing this physical activity.
Your body just responds to what your body and your
brain are doing. And so one reason you know, just
biologically that our heart rate might go up fast and
our skeletal muscle may start to move fast, is that
(06:55):
you know a bear is chasing us, or someone's trying
to kill us or something, and so you're body has
a response to that, especially when you're not very well
trained in cardio or resistance, et cetera. And that is
to release adrenaline. Also knows epinephrine, so that it liberates
substrates for energy and things of that nature in case
(07:18):
you have to run away from a bear or fight
someone off or whatever. Now, if you're not you're just
out for a jog and all of a sudden you
feel like this and a rageful feeling or whatever. Shaky
that will go away. Now there's a couple other things
that mitigate it. If you've been fasting and you haven't
eaten enough, sometimes that'll happen sooner. But a lot of
(07:39):
it is just getting your body use to the idea
of training so that then your body kind of goes
into this mode of, oh, this is that thing that
we do. We're not running from a bear or anything.
We're just going out and getting on the treadmill or
we're going for a hike or whatever is that we're doing.
So a lot of that is about training to get
to like the happy brain chemistry, et cetera. Now, cardio
(08:01):
is one big area of helping your body to work better,
but then resistance training is more specifically trying to move
your larger muscles, so that would be armed, shoulder, chest,
legs especially, and then your core muscles that hold your
body up and so resistance training can be done with
(08:21):
all of those and that's very, very good for you
for a few reasons that we'll talk about. One of
the benefits of resistance training is that you have a
longer calorie burn. So while cardio will burn up to
twenty percent more calories immediately, it kind of stops after
(08:43):
your cardio event is over, and resistance will do things
biologically to your muscles so that you have a metabolism change.
It lasts after the workout, which is very important, so
the calorie burn can go on longer. The other thing
is that your metabolism can upregulate with skeletal muscle activity.
(09:10):
Resistance work for one or two days after you have
a workout, so your metabolism actually goes up. People are
always worried about their slow metabolism, or they're recovering from
a disease and they have slow metabolism. One way to
get your metabolism back in the game and to kind
of kick it up a notch is to do some
resistive exercise. Now, in our series on Movement as Medicine,
(09:33):
we're going to talk about, you know, healing up after
injuries and other stuff like that, so we'll save that
for that little section there. The other thing that resistance
training does is increase your muscle mass. Now, it turns
out that you don't have to be big and giant
and you know, have giant muscles all over to have
(09:53):
an increase in muscle mass. That makes a biological and
a health difference for you. What we're finding now now
is that people that can work their skeletal muscles even
a little more than they used to have chemistry shifts
in their body that become less inflammatory, more prone to
(10:15):
the right kind of immune chemistry, more prone to resistance
from disease, more prone to all sorts of good things.
And the important part about that is, yes, you'll get
some of that with cardio, but you actually get more
with resistance exercise. So then the next question that people
(10:35):
often come up with is they'll say, well, you know,
I'm not a powerlifter, or you know, I've been sick
or i've whatever, or I'm just changing my life now
and i want to get more active. Well, one of
the best things that you can do is to move
the biggest muscles that you can up to the point
that you tolerated. And it turns out that the major
(10:58):
large muscle groups in your in your legs. So even
a sedentary person by starting to stand and sit down more,
for example, or somebody maybe who's a little bit trained
or does a lot of cardio and they start to
do a little bit of leg work and some squats
and things like that, and then if you can do
(11:19):
the other bigger muscles, that's great, But the legs have
the most potent impact on resistive exercise initially because of
the biggest massive muscles. Then you go to your core
muscles and your arms, et cetera, so you don't have
to do a lot. It's different for that effect to
come about. So you get a metabolism increase, you get
(11:39):
a longer caloric burn, and you also wind up with
more muscle mass as you go along. Now there is
the idea that muscle itself, muscles metabolism is actually medicine.
That's going to be our next topic that we're going
to talk about, So we won't get too much into
(12:01):
metabolism here except to say that by moving your body
and by working the bigger muscles, you're doing resistive exercise,
and that is very helpful for your metabolic health for
your long term health. Resistant disease ET cetera. And even
in things such as you know, some bad infections and cancer, etc.
(12:24):
You can have a better recovery if you're doing some
kind of resistive type exercise. Now, when we get to
recovery exercise, we'll get into the details of that, because obviously,
if you've just been through surgery or you've been through
some other problem, you're not going to go right back out,
you know, start powerlifting or something like that right away.
(12:46):
You have to kind of work into it. So we'll
get into that too. So what about you know, if
you had to make a choice and you had to
do one or the other, what would help. Well, many
experts that I've read and I would agree with this,
because the body is not disconnected. We'll say, do resistive
exercise because your heart rate is still going to go up.
(13:08):
Your brain knows what's going on. Now. When I was young,
many many decades ago, and I was an athlete, when
we were training, they would always say, you know, you
got to do a cardio portion and a wait portion
and keep things in balance. That's probably ideal, but you're
going to get a little bit resistive exercise doing cardio,
(13:28):
and you're going to get a little cardio, doing resistive exercise,
but really the resistive exercise and its impact on your
muscle as medicine for your body. It's most important. All right,
I'm doctor Paul Anderson. Please like, share, subscribe, hit the
notifications because sometimes we get marginalized on the apps and
we'll get onto our next next section here coming right up.
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