More Exercise is BetterDr. Paul Williams of the University of California atBerkeley thinks that the American Heart Association's recommendationof "half an hour a day of exercise" is way too little. He hasfollowed more than 100,000 runners for 20 years and has shownthat exercising much more than that will dramatically reduce thehigh incidence of heart attacks, strokes, certain cancers,glaucoma, diabetes, cataracts, macular degeneration, gout, gallstones, diverticulitis, and many other ailments (Medicine & Sciencein Sports & Exercise, March 2009). Dr. Williams found that running40 miles per week can lower risk of stroke by 69 percent, heartattacks by 37 percent and diabetes by 68 percent. To preventprogressive weight gain with aging, the runners needed to add1.4 miles a week each year.How inactivity kills: Human muscles get their energy byextracting sugar and fat from their blood supply. When muscles areat rest, they need insulin for sugar to pass into their cells.However, when muscles contract, sugar passes into their cellswithout requiring insulin.Extra fat blocks insulin receptors so insulin can't do itsjob of driving sugar into cells and blood sugar rises to highlevels. This causes sugar to stick to the surface of cellmembranes. Once stuck to cell membranes, sugar can never getoff and is eventually converted to sorbitol which destroys the cellto cause all the terrible side effects of diabetes.The extra sugar outside cells is converted to fat, whichblocks insulin receptors even more and prevents insulin fromdoing its job, leading to more weight gain and eventually todiabetes. Thirty-five percent of North Americans will becomediabetic because they exercise too little and eat too much.Also see http://www.drmirkin.com/fitness/1678.htmlWhy more exercise is better: Contracting muscles removesugar rapidly from the bloodstream, without needing insulin, duringand for up to one hour after exercise. The effect tapers off tozero at about 17 hours (American Journal of Clinical Nurtrition,July 2008). You are protected maximally from high rises in bloodsugar and fat during and immediately after exercise. Therefore,the more time you spend contracting muscles, the longer you willbe protected from the cell damage that leads to cancers, heartattacks, strokes, and other consequences that shorten your lifeor impair its quality.
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