Coping With Hot Flashes, Cold Chills and Diabetes

There are various reasons for hot flashes and cold chills, ranging from problems with your wellness and wellbeing in a medical sense, to menopause to anxiety attacks and having a high temperature. Diabetes, too, can cause hot, sweaty flashes followed by chills, if your blood sugar drops too low.

 

What you may not know, however, is that you can use your weight loss and fitness regime to help fight against both hot flashes and cold chills, no matter what the cause is.

 

Aerobic exercise is particularly good, especially for those who have diabetes, as it can help decrease your risk of developing heart disease – a common side effect of diabetes. Aerobic exercise helps to maintain a healthy weight and can help to increase your sensitivity to insulin.

 

If you are a diabetic, try checking your sugar levels before and after a workout, so that you can see how beneficial exercise is on your system. Aerobic exercise includes anything where you work up a bit of a sweat and get your heart racing.

 

You should aim for low impact exercise if you have diabetes, however, as a side effect of your disease means that you have reduced blood flow to your extremities and this can be problematic. If you do an exercise that involves pounding or pressure, it can lead to diabetes-related problems with the nerve endings in your feet. If you do suffer from any tingling or numbness in your feet, check regularly for any unexplained bruising on your feet and go and visit your doctor. Low-impact exercises can involve swimming, cycling or rowing or some simple chair exercises.

 

Make sure that you don’t take any form of exercise if your blood sugar is over 300 mg/dl, as exercise should be started slowly and gradually to help reduce the chances of hot flashes or cold chills.

Categories: Aerobic Exercise, Blood Sugar, chills, Diabetes, exercise, flashes, hot flashes, nbsp

Fitness Foolishness: How to Avoid the Major Workout Mistakes

Whether you’re a fitness freak or brave new beginner, the chances are you’re not taking care of your wellbeing at the gym. This is according to John Porcari, PhD, FACSM, a professor in the Department of Exercise and Sports Science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, who says, ‘Roughly 85 to 90% of the people in the gym are NOT getting the maximum benefit from their workouts—they’re basically window shopping.’ So if you’re not working out properly, is there any point in exercising at all?

 

There’s no denying that exercise is good for your wellness, and this is the point made by Dr. Lewis Maharam, a physician specialising in sports medicine and the medical director of the New York City Marathon. He notes that working out – even if you’re not doing it as well as you could – is ‘certainly better than sitting on the couch in front of the television munching on a pizza, but realistically, if you’re not working both your heart and muscles—well, you will not see much return on your time.’ So, let’s take a look at the main mistakes that people make when training, and see whether you can, well, not make them.

 

1. 100% Cardio, 0% Strength Training: Dr. Porcari explains, ‘Strength training is a necessary part of a balanced workout—it increases your strength, balance, coordination and calorie-burning power. People don’t realise that muscle mass drives your metabolism better than aerobic training. In fact, if you lose ten pounds doing aerobic exercise alone, 30% of what you lose is much-needed muscle mass, not fat. But if you lose ten pounds by using both aerobic and strength training, you’ll only lose about 10% muscle mass—this keeps your metabolism moving at a fast pace.’

 

2. 100% Strength Training, 0% Cardio: It’s important to build muscle with strength training, but you’re short-changing yourself by not exercising one of the most important muscles—the heart. Besides burning calories more effectively, you need to incorporate aerobic exercise into your workout in order to prevent heart disease, sleep disorders, diabetes, anxiety and depression.

 

3. No-Sweat Cardio: “Breaking a sweat” isn’t just a phrase for the sake of it; it’s important to your workout effectiveness. Dr. Maharam points out, ‘If you’re not sweating, you’re not working—if you haven’t raised your body temperature a half a degree, which causes sweating, then you haven’t worked out.’ You should be aiming to exercise within your target heart rate zone (between 60 and 80% of your maximum heart rate) for a minimum of 20 minutes.

 

4. Leaning on Fitness Machines: Leaning on the stair stepper, elliptical trainer or treadmill not only knackers your wrists and back, but it can significantly lower the intensity and effectiveness of your workout. In fact, studies have shown that if you lean on the machine, your body is utilising 25% less energy than it could, which also means you’re burning fewer calories.

 

5. Bad Form: Patricia Moreno, a celebrity trainer in New York City and Los Angeles, asserts, ‘Strength training requires intense focus and concentration on all aspects of the exercise, including breathing, technique, repetitions and amount of weight. If you ignore any of these components, you will severely limit the effectiveness of your training, not to mention put yourself at risk for injury.’

 

6. Just Going Through the Motions: ‘If you don’t challenge the body, the workout isn’t going to do anything for you,’ Moreno urges. ‘Doing the same old routine month after month can lose its efficiency—sometimes your body needs a bit of a shock to keep it moving. Try revising your routine about every 12 weeks.’

Categories: Aerobic Exercise, Bad Form, exercise, Heart Rate, Mistakes, muscle mass, nbsp, No Sweat, strength, Strength Training, training, york city

How to Make the Most of Your Aerobic Sessions

Aerobics is a fantastic form of exercise for strengthening the muscles, improving circulation and the respiratory system, and building stamina. A typical class lasts around 30 to 60 minutes and usually begins with a warm-up, and ends with a cool-down section. There are several different forms of this exercise, including step aerobics, kickboxing and Tae Bo. Step aerobics is a great platform for strength training, and involves quite literally stepping up onto and down from a portable platform whilst performing the exercises.

 

Kickboxing is a sporting martial art form which is similar to boxing and uses the feet as well as the hands for striking movements. A session of kickboxing involves abdominal crunches, jumping jacks, leg lifts and punching for a total body workout. Tae Bo is a programme which combines Tae kwon do and boxing, as well as aspects of dance, to provide a really effective workout. The name stands for Total, Awareness, Excellence, Body and Obedience. With step aerobics, the fitness level of the person is determined by the height of the step, the leg length, stepping skill and coordination. To begin with, individuals should begin on the lowest step so that they can stay within an appropriate aerobic training zone of 60 to 75 percent of their maximum heart rate. They usually start off with a four-inch step, and as this becomes easier the height of the step can be increased to a maximum of 10 inches. With kickboxing, gloves may be added to the workout for additional resistance and protection. However, once you add gloves to your workout you need to reduce the duration of punches – continual punching for longer than ten or 15 seconds isn’t recommended with the same arm.

 

Regular exercise can have a wonderful effect on your health and wellbeing, and can reduce your risk of developing certain health problems. For example, obesity can increase the risk of coronary heart disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, type 2 diabetes and hypertension. Exercising is one of the best ways of maintaining a healthy weight, so it can help to keep you healthy in a number of ways. It can also build and maintain a healthy skeletal and muscular system, can prevent premature death and lowers the risk of developing depression and anxiety. If you’re new to exercise, taking it slow is important to avoid damaging the muscles or joints, or risking injury. In fact, most trainers or fitness experts would agree that it’s best to consult your GP before undertaking any exercise or embarking on a programme so that you can check that it’s safe for you. This is particularly the case for people with pre-diagnosed health problems, such as heart disease or diabetes, as exercising too strenuously could make the problem worse.

 

Physical exercise can lead to dehydration, so it’s vital that you drink plenty of water before, during and after you exercise. If you’re exercising on a step aerobics programme, the ‘loaded’ knee should never flex beyond a 90 degree angle. This refers to the lead leg that lifts onto the step. Your hip joint should always be a few inches higher than the knee. Even if you’re fit, kickboxing carries a lot of injury risks so you should be wary of these. Overextended kicks, locked joints and exercising when you’re fatigued all increase the risk of damage to the body so it’s advised you train with a professional at least until you’ve learnt how to perform the moves in the correct way. The same risks are attributed to Tae Bo, so seek the advice of a trainer to begin with.

Categories: Aerobic Exercise, aerobics, exercise, fitness, health, health problems, heart disease, kickboxing, risk, step, step aerobics, tae bo

Run, Lift, Stretch: How to Stop Heart Disease with Exercise

Wellness experts seem to always be harping on about heart health, and the steps you need to take to guard your wellbeing against heart disease, but what do you actually need to do? Aside from drinking less, eating better and quitting smoking, if you want to love your heart, you need to get it pumping.

Being active is essential for a healthy heart, because your heart is a muscle and you need to use it to keep it strong. That sentence may seem like a line from a Taylor Swift song, but you genuinely need to strengthen your heart muscle to help it pump more efficiently, and give you more stamina and greater energy. Exercise also improves the ability of your body’s tissues to extract oxygen from your blood, which helps you to speed your metabolism.

There are three types of exercise are vital for all-round fitness. Firstly, aerobic exercise, also known as cardio, is any kind of activity that increases your breathing rate and gets you breathing more deeply. This is particularly important in the prevention of coronary heart disease, as activities such as walking, running, swimming, dancing or using a rowing machine, treadmill, stepper or elliptical trainer increases your heart muscle strength. With these exercises, your body is more able to extract oxygen from your blood and transport it to where it needs to go.

Resistance training strengthens your muscles and bones and protects your joints from the risk of injury. Exercises using weights, yoga exercises in which you use your body weight, press-ups, lunges, squats and even carrying heavy shopping bags are all good for resistance. Though resistance training doesn’t increase the fitness, it can help to control your weight because muscular tissue burns more calories than fat. However, you should check with your doctor if you have uncontrolled high blood pressure or heart disease, as this type of exercise isn’t advisable.

Finally, flexibility exercises are important for your heart, as stretching helps to relax and lengthen your muscles, improve your blood flow, and keep you supple so you can move more easily. It is recommended that you stretch for five to 10 minutes every day, and you can learn various simply stretches in any exercise book, online, or from a fitness trainer. You can also take part in stretching-orientated classes, such as yoga or Pilates. That said, there may still be some exercises or postures that are not recommended if you have heart disease, so check with your doctor first and inform your instructor.

Run, Lift, Stretch: How to Stop Heart Disease with Exercise

Categories: Aerobic Exercise, Disease, exercise, exercises, extract oxygen, heart, heart disease, heart muscle, resistance training, Stretching