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short burst aerobic

Why Exercise is Important – Mesa AZ Back Pain Doctor

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IF YOU CAN’T EXERCISE THIS MUCH, JUST HANG IT UP NOW….

Gotta love us lazy humans.  Just how little exercise, how little we have to exert and how infrequent do we have to exercise and still get a benefit?

Not that I advocate hanging out of the bottom of the bell curve, but in this study participants did short bursts on an exercise bike.

How long?

30 seconds each.

Just how many?

4-6 sets.

How many days per week?

3.

For those of you who excel at math, this is 9 minutes per week.

9 measly minutes.  The improvements were actually quite dramatic.  The research is continuing to disprove the “50 minute aerobic” model of exercise and moving towards a short-burst type of style.

I definitely think this is more of what our bodies were designed for.  Seriously…name an animal our ancestors would have pursued for 45 minutes or an animal we would’ve evaded at a sprint for 45 minutes.  Think you could go 45 mins running from a Sabre toothed tiger or a bear?  Think you could track an antelope for 45 minutes?

Read article here

What Kind of Exercise are YOU Doing to Lose Weight?

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irisin levels with exercise
eyetronic/Dollar Photo Club

You understand that, to lose weight or to maintain an ideal body composition, exercise is a key component.

I met an old friend in the store the other day and the short conversation steered towards his blood pressure, which had slowly crept up over the years.  Along with some extra padding around his middle.

In the few tips I quickly gave him, the subject of exercise was brought up by him.  He knew that exercise was an important component to good health.

But society has been led to believe that a consistent plan of walking around the block several times per week (carrying a BPA-laden plastic water bottle, I might add—like a walk around the block is going to put you at risk of drying up to a husk…).

If this was the answer, I think we’ve had far less problems with obesity and diabetes than we do.  But it’s not.

Not that I would discourage you from moving versus sitting on the couch—clearly movement is going to win out over sedentary behaviors.

But what about the cultures that have walking as part of the daily routine and obesity is much less of a concern?  Clearly there is some link between walking and health.

I think the difference here is quantity.  Ever taken your kids to Disney?  I’ve figured that, on an average day in Disney with my family, we put in some 10+ miles PER DAY.  Other cultures in other countries such as Peru (I only use this country of an example after a patient of mine went there to visit and was astonished at home much walking they do as part of daily life) put in miles and miles and miles per day.  The quantities we are talking about in cultures like this are far different than what you are going to put in by walking 3 times per week for 30 minutes.

So, if you ARE walking 10 miles per day, don’t worry about it.  If, however, this doesn’t quite fit your exercise profile, then it’s got to be short-burst aerobic.

I have written rather extensively about the benefits of short-burst aerobic activity over sustained aerobic activity for quite a few years now.  And the research continues to support the idea that this type of exercise is more in tune with what you were designed for.

And this particular study is no different.  In it, researchers looked at the relatively-newly-discovered hormone called irisin.  Irisin is released from muscles in response to exercise and may be responsible for a large chunk of the benefits of exercise (read more about how whole body vibration can increase irisin levels by clicking here).

One particular benefit that has been identified is the increase in the amount of brown fat in your body.  Brown fat is fat that literally burns calories in order to make heat.  Pretty cool concept.  More brown fat leads to a lower risk of obesity and diabetes.

In this study, researchers looked at the levels of irisin produced in response to 4 different exercise patterns that varied in intensity and duration.  Here’s what they found:

  • There were no variations in hormone levels during the day (diurnal variations).
  • Irisin levels were not affected by meals and levels decreased with age.
  • Levels were strongly related to the amount of lean body mass.
  • There was a clear and immediate increase in irisin levels after acute strenuous cycling.
  • Longer (six weeks) or chronic (one year) increases in physical activity did not affect irisin.

This is not to say that you should not plan on settling into an exercise routine for the long haul.  But this study just confirms that you can never give up on the idea that you NEED to be challenging yourself aerobically.  It is NOT AN OPTION.

Personally, I am always looking for the opportunity to RUN up the stairs or RUN for the car any chance I get.  And my aerobic exercise routine involves either an elliptical or treadmill in a short-burst fashion.  While MY short-burst may be different from YOUR short-burst, on the elliptical I do 10 sets of 30-second bursts on the highest resistance as fast as I can reasonably go.  On the treadmill, it’s a 10 degree incline on 8-10 miles / hour for the 30-second burst.

If you’re not already doing this type of routine, start TODAY.  There is no reason to consider a sustained 45 minute exercise routine in lieu of a short-burst one.

 

Which is Better? Exercise in the Morning or Split Up in Day?

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interval aerobic training wins again
Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/knight725/

I hate to beat a dead horse, especially if he dropped dead from too much aerobic exercise, but society just does not seem to be getting the point about aerobic exercise.

Quite frankly, we’re doing too much.

I know that many of you are disappointed to hear this. After all, in today’s rush-rush society everyone is getting the recommended 30 minutes minimum of aerobic exercise at least 3 times per week, right? Yeah. Reality check–most Americans still do not have regular exercise as part of their lifestyle routine. And, even if they are, it’s likely they are not doing the most beneficial type.

The research continues to support a short-burst, high intensity, aerobic activity rather than a single bout of light to moderate intensity workout. Personally, when I’m doing one of my short bursts on the treadmill or elliptical, I’m going all out for that 30 second session. It’s not a leisurely pace at which I could maintain a conversation on my cell phone to some out of the country customer service rep for my mortage. When I’m done with my burst, it takes some time (1-2 minutes) to recover somewhat from the oxygen debt I have accumulated.

This particular study is yet another one to chalk up for the short-burst aerobic crowd. This small study looked at 11 obese individuals (aged 18–35 years) who were prediabetic and had them performed differently on three different days:

1. Sedentary behavior with no exercise
2. Otherwise sedentary behavior with 1-hour of morning exercise at 60%–65% peak VO2
3. Same sedentary behavior with 12-hourly, 5-min intervals of exercise at the same intensity

Researchers than checked sugar and insulin levels in the bloodstream. Here are the results:

• Glucose levels were actually lower in the interval exercise and sedentary situations.
• Glucose levels were higher in the 1 hour exercise situation than in the sedentary situation for about 2.5 hours.
• Glucose levels were also higher in the 1 hour exercise situation than the interval exercise situation for about 4 hours.
• The production of insulin was 20% higher with the interval exercise when compared to the other two situations.

While this study was not on high-intensity aerobic activity, it does demonstrate the benefit of breaking up the exercise routine into small groups instead of a single time period.

How do YOU spend your time exercising??

Short Burst Aerobic from a Cellular Standpoint

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Ok, ok. I truly don’t mean to beat you over the head with this concept, but I’m going to anyway. I think we’re approaching exercise all wrong.

The problem is that, if I’m right, this isn’t some little tidbit that doesn’t make a difference. All of our public health recommendations need to be revamped.

Let’s face it, the standard “30 minutes of walking most days of the week” just isn’t cutting it. And yet you probably drive by several people per day who appear to be walking around the block at a leisurely pace, likely carrying that beloved plastic water bottle.

If you go to the gym, the treadmills, exercise bikes, ellipticals, rowing machines and aerobic classes are full of people logging in hours and hours of constant-stream aerobic activity.

Despite the evidence, the American Heart Association and the American Diabetic Association remain silent on the value of short-burst aerobic exercise.

This particular article is written in Medical Hypothesis, a journal containing articles written by forward-thinking scientist. Some may be way off the mark, others are later shown to be right on. Still others merely put together all the pieces from across the world of research and come to conclusions before anyone else even notices that there is a puzzle.

Dr. Cherkas and Dr. Golota begin to put the pieces together by first looking at the short-burst aerobic picture from the context of glycogen.

Glycogen is a molecule made up of multiple pieces of glucose. Most of the glycogen in our bodies is stored in either the liver or in our muscles and is used quickly for fuel when we first begin to burn calories (such as while exercising). After we eat, the hormone insulin tells our liver and muscles to take the glucose (sugar) from the meal out of the blood and store it as glycogen.

Later, the hormone glucagon is released from the pancreas, which results in a slow breakdown of the stored glycogen in the liver so that the rest of the body can have a stable source of glucose until the next meal.

Short burst aerobic activity burns through ATP (the energy currency of the cell), then creatine phosphate, then glycogen is broken down into glucose molecules for fuel. Because this leaves the cell starving for more glycogen, the next exposure to glucose (such as after a meal) is going to lead to increased uptake of sugar from the bloodstream and into these glycogen-depleted cells.

When we start to look at additional pieces of the chronic-disease management puzzle, calorie restricted diets and intermittent fasting have much the same effect on glycogen stores, again leaving your cells hungry to grab the extra glucose from the next meal.

With this in mind, you can begin to see how many of these approaches to disease management and / or longevity end up having similar effects on glycogen storage in the liver and muscles. On the flip side, without this depletion of glycogen before the next meal, if the cell is already full of glycogen, glucose taken up at this point will get stored as fat inside the cells.

More fat inside the cells leads to unhealthy cells (fatty liver, intramyocellular lipid accumulation) and higher risks of chronic diseases. Not a good thing.

Overall, I thought it was interesting to connect calorie restriction, intermittent fasting and short burst aerobic activity via glycogen use and storage.