The optimal CAM approaches for Health include Mild Walking in the Wooded (green) Area, Aquatic Yoga, and Spinal Alignment (Gentle Yoga practice).
Dr. Naresh Chand
Health & Wellness Coach| Holistic Health Educator| Ayurvedic Cooking and Yoga for Aging with Grace Online Business and Preventive Medicine expert and Health Coach for corporations,
?
The optimal CAM approaches for Health include Mild Walking in the Wooded (green) Area, Aquatic Yoga, and Spinal Alignment (Gentle Yoga practice). Naresh Chand, Ph.D., Courtesy ADRxSynergy
CAM approaches for Health include Mild Walking in the Wooded (green) Area, Aquatic Yoga (1), and Spinal Alignment (Gentle Yoga practice- this is more applicable for seniors (2) and young people.
Dr. Chand’s neighbor (an Asian Couple) took early retirement and walked in the neighborhood for 15-30 minutes (2-3 times a day; 4-6 miles a day)- they did it religiously for >27 years, and both (now 84 and 80) are doing well.? Often, both loved to talk to other men or women (neighbors - easy conversations)- they enjoyed their simple life and hopefully will live longer.
Note: Intense exercise, high doses of herbs and spices or their extracts- “supplements” or too many medications or dietary supplements may act as Pro-oxidants and Pro-inflammatory for many people. The adverse interactions can be additive or synergistic when we consume too much of even good things. Too much of any good thing may bring bad outcomes for millions.?
Personal touch
?
Dr. Chand has engaged in gentle yoga practices after his stroke (1998) for 15 minutes of stretching in the sauna and Aquatic yoga for 15 min on most days (2000-2019) and 15 minutes of walking during the lunch break on most days (some sun exposure).
After retirement, Dr. Chand got engrossed in learning more about the gentle yogic practice since 2021 for 90 minutes (7-8:30 AM; and recently added 80-850 F. temperature near the Yoga Mat in his home most days. ?Gentle --spinal alignment or Hath yoga practices are more efficacious at 80-850 F.
?
Dr. Gupta's Aquatic Yoga for Chronic Pain is an alternative, holistic approach to chronic pain management. The technique described in this book also supports slowing or reversing osteoarthritis, reducing the impact of stress on vast fasciae, and improving the brain’s resiliency. More clinical research is warranted. Any proceeds from the sale of this e-book will go to community service projects.
?
2.??? Gentle Yogic Practice-Spinal Alignment – Dr. Chand (just practice run)
?
It is accessible to all on Zoom or watch YouTube, Rajan, LifeInYoga.
YouTube:?https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4O1XnCxzSexJ2VlZDeEKTQ Please subscribe to the YouTube channel: LifeinYoga, Rajan
Registration link (free)
International Yoga (7 am EST USA; 12 noon UK and West Africa; 4 pm Gulf; 5:30 pm India): https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_PgDqXW-rSRSk-AglYnQjtQ East Coast Yoga (5:30 PM US Eastern Time):?https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_pbN6r0mBSRuN-iYHYiGe6Q
Yoga Concepts for Global Application: A Primer for Beginners and Instructors - A textbook for those seeking deeper understanding of Yoga?Paperback – https://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Concepts-Global-Application-understanding/dp/B0C9SNKGBD
?
?
For Busy people, 2-3 minutes of gentle stretching or moving or balance improving practices every 30-90 minutes may reduce the risk of all diseases by 30%.
3.??? This a great educational and informative article from Dr. Mercola https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/11/26/nailing-the-sweet-spots-for-exercise-volume.aspx
?STORY AT-A-GLANCE
O’Keefe’s systematic review revealed that if you’re sedentary and begin to exercise, you get a dose-dependent decrease in mortality, diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, coronary disease, osteoporosis, sarcopenia, falls, and more. So, most definitely, you can dramatically slow aging and improve life expectancy with exercise.
However, at the very high end, the people who are doing the highest volume of vigorous exercise start losing those benefits.
"They're not as bad off as sedentary people, but virtually every study you can find, they will lose some of those benefits for longevity, and certainly for things like atrial fibrillation.
If you go from sedentary to exercise moderately, you have less atrial fibrillation. But if you're doing full distance triathlons when you're over age 40 or 45, you start seeing a 500% to 800% increase in atrial fibrillation."
O’Keefe cites a recent large-scale study that followed about 1 million individuals for more than 10 years. While vigorous exercise up to 75 minutes per week reduced the risk of all-cause mortality and other diseases in a dose-dependent manner, benefits plateaued after that.
So, people who were doing four to seven hours of vigorous exercise per week didn't get any additional benefit, "and probably, from a cardiovascular standpoint, lost a little bit," O’Keefe says.
Take-Home No. 2: You Cannot Overdo Moderate Exercise
?
In the case of moderate exercise, however — loosely defined as exercising to the point where you're slightly winded but can still carry on a conversation — it’s very clear that more IS better and cannot be overdone.
领英推荐
"We're talking gardening, housework, walking, recreational bike riding, yoga, nonintense swimming, pickleball. [When doing] these things, more is better,"?O’Keefe says.
Perhaps even more surprising, moderate exercise also improves all-cause survival better than vigorous exercise — about two times better. "If you look at the people who are doing the most vigorous exercise compared to the people doing the most moderate exercise, the moderate exercisers have twice as good a reduction in long-term mortality as the high volume vigorous exerciser," he says. What this means in practical terms is that:
a)There’s no need to engage in high-intensity strenuous exercise beyond 75 minutes per week. Doing so can be highly counterproductive. If you’re an overachiever, stick to moderate exercise instead and your benefits will continue to accrue and your efforts won’t eventually backfire.
b)Once you get into your mid-40s and 50s, exercise should be fun and stress-reducing, not competitive. In his analysis, O’Keefe also stresses the importance of "social exercise" over solo exercise: playing a game of pickleball with friends, for example.
Several years ago, he conducted a study with colleagues in Copenhagen, Denmark, in which they looked at long-term granular data on physical activity and longevity.
Playing tennis conferred 9.5 years of extra life expectancy; playing badminton got seven years; running, swimming and cycling were associated with just 3.5 years of extra life expectancy. Health club activities such as weightlifting and running on a treadmill only conferred 1.5 years of additional life expectancy compared to sedentary life.
At first, O’Keefe thought the analysis had somehow gone wrong. But then he realized it was the social aspects of the sports that conferred the added benefits.
"Exercising and making social connections simultaneously is an absolute goldmine of a longevity activity,"?he says.?"That means that even walking with your dog or friend or [playing] pickleball is huge ... The whole thing is to move your body in a fun, playful manner and make it social."
What Big Data Tell Us About the Benefits of Walking
Walking should not be underestimated, either. The average American walks about 3,800 steps daily, just short of 2 miles. It’s about 2,000 steps per mile, and every 1,000 steps you get on average daily reduces your mortality by 10% to 15%, O’Keefe notes.
"There's been more and more studies on this all the time, using activity trackers. We’re getting big data, like the UK biobank, which is half a million people, and there's a sizable subgroup of them who have been wearing activity trackers and have been followed for ten years now.
Clearly, more is better. You get significant gains from sedentary lifestyles — 2,000 to 3,000 steps daily — up to 7,000 or 8,000. [Here] you have this very steep reduction in mortality, improvement in survival. It continues to about 12,000 steps a day. Most of the studies show that it plateaus at 12,000."
Track Your Steps, but Beware of EMFs
If you’re strapped for cash, you don’t need to invest in a special fitness tracker. Most cellphones have free activity trackers, so all you need to do is carry your phone with you. It’s not ideal due to the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) emitted, but you could put it in airplane mode.
I recently gave a lecture at an autism event called Documenting Hope in Orlando. They’re committed to research and have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to do detailed analyses of autistic children to identify the causes of autism.
I almost fell off my chair when I heard the results. EMF was the No. 2 cause of autism. No. 1 was antibiotics, No. 3 was toxins, and No. 4 was vaccines. So, please, do take EMF exposures seriously. While adults aren’t going to develop autism from EMF exposure, it can still cause neurological damage. So, keep your cellphone in airplane mode when not in use, or better yet, in a Faraday bag.
Take-Home No. 3: Overdoing Strength Training Is Worse Than Doing Nothing at All
O’Keefe’s meta-analysis also detailed the sweet spot for strength training, and the results truly shocked me. I radically changed my exercise program after reviewing these data.
Without question, strength training will improve muscle mass, muscle and bone strength. It can also boost your testosterone level if not overdone. It helps to improve mood and prevent falls. As you get into your 30s, you start to lose muscle mass and if you don't train to maintain muscle mass, you’ll eventually end up with sarcopenia (low muscle mass) or osteoporosis (low bone density). O’Keefe comments:
"I've always been a fan of strength training ... But again, the devil is in the details about the dosing. When you look at people who do strength training, it adds another 19% reduction in all-cause mortality on top of the 45% reduction that you get from one hour of moderate exercise per day.
When I strength train, I go to the gym and spend anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes, and ... I try to use weights that I can do 10 reps with ... After that, you're feeling sort of like spent and ... it takes a couple of days to recover. If you do that two, at the most three, times a week, that looks like the sweet spot for conferring longevity."
The graph above, from the meta-analysis, shows the J-shaped dose-response for strength training activates and all-cause mortality. As you can see, the benefit maxes out right round 40 to 60 minutes a week. Beyond that, you’re losing benefit.
Once you get to 130 to 140 minutes of strength training per week, your longevity benefit becomes the same as if you weren't doing anything, which is nothing short of shocking. If you train for three to four hours a week, you actually end up with WORSE long-term survival than people who don't strength train!
Recall, when you’re doing intense vigorous exercise in excess, you’re still better off than people who are sedentary. But for some (yet undetermined) reason, excessive strength training leaves you worse off than being sedentary.
So, the take-home message here is that 20 minutes twice a week on non-consecutive days, or 40 minutes once a week is the sweet spot. You also don’t want your exercise regimen to center around strength training. It should be an add-on, as you get far greater benefits simply from walking, or any other moderate exercise.
What About When You Do KAATSU?
Now, there may be a caveat to this. Conventional strength training involves lifting weights that are anywhere from 70% to 90% of your one-rep max, and that’s the style of weight training most studies are based on. Another form of strength training is blood flow restriction (BFR) training or the Japanese term,?KAATSU.
In KAATSU, you’re using light weights — 70% lower than conventional weightlifting. Considering you’re not pushing your body to the max with heavy weights, you can likely train longer than one hour a week without nullifying benefits. It’s closer to moderate movement exercise than conventional resistance training.
O’Keefe is not familiar with KAATSU and has not studied its effects, but he agrees that it makes rational sense that you should be able to work out longer when doing KAATSU — maybe two to three hours a week.
Get Your Nature Fix
O’Keefe’s paper also discusses the benefits of spending time in nature. A British study cited found you need at least 1.5 to two hours outdoors each week for good health, even if it’s only a local park or tree-lined street.
"And then forest bathing is really interesting,"?he notes.?"Japanese people who live in Tokyo, one of the biggest cities in the world, will get on a bullet train and an hour or two later be at the mountains and in the forest. They go hike around or even sit in nature and smell the pine and the fresh air. Then they get on the bullet train and go back home.
They show reductions in blood pressure and improvement in mood. And there's really, really strong benefits ... It’s been shown to ... reduce anxiety and improve sleep and all those kinds of things that are important for well-being."
The Sit-Rise Test
?
?