Now let’s look at how exercise affects your risk of stroke, dementia, and cancer—as well as how you feel.
Exercise and Stroke
Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the elderly. Such statements relate to death rate, but I remind you again, forget death rate—think about the quality of your life if you survive such a stroke. You can have a light heart attack yet survive to be active again. However, you can have a light stroke and survive yet be impaired the rest of your life. So in addition to the fact that stroke is a leading cause of death, it is also a major cause of mental as well as physical disability as people get older. Don’t just think about whether you are going to die earlier or later. Think more of the physical results following a stroke—limping around, being in a wheelchair, having slurred speech, or not being able to use one arm. Stroke may be the third leading cause of death of older adults in the United States, but possibly even worse, stroke is the number one leading cause of adult disability.
A stroke is nothing more than a heart attack in the brain. Eighty percent of arterial blockage results in a heart attack, while 20 percent ends up as a stroke. The same process is going on in the arteries to your brain as in the arteries to your heart. Not only is the same process going on to cause the blockage, but the same prevention is also applicable to both sets of arteries.
The medical journal Stroke reports an interesting study of over forty-five thousand men who had no history of disease in the arteries of their hearts or in their brains. Numerous studies had already proven the protective effect of exercise on the arteries of the heart, but this study was set up to evaluate whether exercise had similar protection on the arteries of the brain. These men were examined to see if exercise had anything to do with preventing a stroke. There was a mean follow-up of over nineteen years. What is interesting is that researchers measured the degree of exercise and correlated that with the risk of having a stroke. They wanted to know not only if exercise played a preventive role on having a stroke but also if different amounts of exercise had different effects on preventing a stroke.
The study sought to answer this question: if exercise helps prevent strokes, will more exercise give more protection? Researchers divided the groups into whether they did low amounts of exercise, moderate exercise, or high vigorous exercise. (Your personal exercise program on the Prescription for Life plan will be more aggressive than this study group’s, so your numbers should be even better than these reported.)
Their low exercise group did essentially no exercise at all, as we refer to it. They described their low exercise group as individuals who were mostly inactive, including reading, watching television, and such. In other words, their low groups were basically sedentary.
Their moderate exercise group consisted of individuals who did some type of physical activity for at least four hours a week. This included activity like walking and cycling.
Then those in their high exercise group did more than three hours per week of exercise such as running, jogging, or swimming. So theirs is less intense than ours, but you will be able to see the comparison.
Here’s what the study found. The high physical activity group had a 31 percent decreased risk of stroke. And the ones in the second group, who did less active exercise, had a 21 percent decreased risk of stroke.
That’s a good life insurance policy. Buy it—it’s free.
Just to be fair with women, since this study was on men, there are several good review articles showing the importance of exercise in preventing strokes in women. Actually, men should pay attention too, because those studies emphasize the significance of exercise on the arteries of your brain, whether you are a man or a woman.
Here are the results of a ten-year follow-up study presented in the journal Stroke. They divided women into groups labeled “no activity,” “moderately active,” and “most active.”
The bottom-line result of the study was that the risk of dying prematurely decreased as physical activity increased. Their recommendation was that exercise should be part of a lifestyle for women to prevent strokes.
Here are a few interesting facets of their study. The women who had the highest amount of exercise were leaner and had lower blood pressure. And guess what! The ones in the “most active” group had a slower resting heart rate. (Remember, the slower the resting heart rate, the stronger the heart.) This group had less heart disease and less diabetes.
What can I say? Exercise is an important part of your lifestyle change. What brings this home is the conclusion about the significance of exercise on stroke prevention. When comparing women who did not exercise with those who exercised the most, researches found that the most active women had approximately a 50 percent lower risk of premature death from stroke.
The question coming from these articles is this: how does exercise lower the risk of having a stroke? Another article in the journal Stroke probably answers that question as well as any. Researchers pointed out that exercise decreases the process of damage to the arterial walls of the arteries feeding the brain, and they listed two problems that are combated by exercise. One, exercise raises HDL Cholesterol, which carries away excess lethal LDL Cholesterol; and two, exercise helps to lower weight, which in turn also raises the good HDL while lowering the bad LDL. Again, you see the Prescription for Life plan working hand in hand with one strategy aiding another. You get double protection of your arteries, not only from the exercise portion of the plan but also from the associated weight-loss portion. Exercise—lose more weight.
Many studies in the medical literature show that exercise can reduce the risk of stroke by 25 to 30 percent. One such study in the United States showed a 25 percent risk reduction of strokes in general, including both fatal and nonfatal strokes. Another study in Finland showed a 34 percent risk reduction. Plus, researchers in Norway studied fatal strokes only, and they found a 53 percent reduced risk of death from a stroke in women who exercised the most.
I will mention one other article, and then we will move on. The article was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on the risk of stroke in women, as related to the protective effect of physical activity. It stated that physical activity was associated with a substantial reduction of strokes in women. It further pointed out that there was a linear relationship between exercise and fewer strokes, meaning that the greater the activity, the less risk of developing a stroke. The group that exercised the most gained a 29 percent overall reduction in risk for having a stroke, whether or not the strokes that did occur were fatal.
Exercise and Dementia
I personally think this may be the most important section of the whole book. So get focused and let your heart absorb what you are about to read. We have seen how exercise increases the efficiency of your pump, your heart, and how exercise helps prevent strokes. Now we add one more benefit: exercise affects the quality of your thinking and cognitive functions as you add years to your life.
Exercise aids in preventing dementia. Having a stroke is not the only problem arising from blocked arteries in the brain. The same process also results in dementia.
There are two basic types of dementia: vascular and Alzheimer’s. The vascular type is caused by the arterial wall problems we have been going over, the LDL Cholesterol splinters getting into the wall of your arteries leading to or inside your brain.
The other type of dementia is called Alzheimer’s disease. Some studies show that Alzheimer’s is related, in part, to the vascular problems we have been discussing. The basis of the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s is in the finding of certain fibers within the brain. That will be covered in more detail later, but right now, know there are things you can do to help prevent both types of dementia.
Here is the important point to remember: clinically, it is difficult to differentiate between vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s dementia. You want to do everything possible to prevent either or both from ever developing in your brain. One of those preventive factors is exercise.
Let’s see what effect exercise can play on preventing you from developing what many call the “drool factor,” where someone sits around in a chair, staring straight ahead, just drooling.
Numerous articles concern exercise and dementia, but one of the most in-depth is an article published in a recent Journal of the American Medical Association. It speaks directly to the relationship between exercise and Alzheimer’s disease. The study looked at exercise as well as the positive significance of the type of diet we have been discussing.
We will look quickly at the role diet played and then the effects of exercise.
This study followed over eighteen hundred adults for over fourteen years. First, researchers reviewed other studies that showed that a diet high in fruits, vegetables, cereals, and fish resulted in a decreased incidence of Alzheimer’s. They gave higher diet scores to the people who ate the most fruits, vegetables, cereals, and fish and lower scores to those eating dairy products and meat. They gave lower scores for eating saturated fat and higher scores for eating monounsaturated fat. By breaking it down so specifically, it is interesting to see exactly what foods affected the development of Alzheimer’s. The Prescription for Life plan eating strategy is substantiated by this study.
Here are their findings according to the seven food categories. The individuals who did the worst in their Alzheimer’s study were the ones who ate the most meat and dairy products, two of the seven categories they tested. The remaining five categories were, as in the Prescription for Life plan, fruits, vegetables, beans, cereals, and fish. The individuals who adhered to the fruit, vegetable, cereal, and fish diet—as compared to the ones who ate the meat and dairy products—had a 40 percent less chance of developing Alzheimer’s. That American Medical Association report alone should be a “moment” changer in your life that convinces you never to put into your mouth the foods listed above in the “bad” group—the “picture in your mind” group you learned about earlier. That report is a good summary of what the Prescription for Life plan can do for you.
That initial part of the report, which revealed that what you eat plays a role in developing dementia, is significant on its own. But now let’s look at what the study found about the role of exercise. You are going to see a huge impact, which will appreciably encourage you to exercise.
Researchers went into great detail concerning the effect of exercise on dementia. They wanted to see if it was better to do more vigorous exercise and for a longer period of time or if less difficult exercise and for a shorter period of time was equally as good. So many times, you hear that you need to be moving thirty minutes a day, five or six days a week. Others will say that a stroll is all you have to do, or to take the stairs rather than the elevator, or to get out of your chair hourly and take a walk around the office. Researchers set the boundaries for each category for an individual to choose the amount of exercise they performed. This report will help you make an informed decision about the intensity of the exercise you need to be doing to protect you against developing the most dreadful disorder I can think of—dementia.
For vigorous aerobic exercise, they included jogging, playing handball, and similar activities in which you are moving constantly with sustained heart rate elevation. For moderate exercise, they included swimming, bicycling, hiking, and tennis. All these are excellent exercises, but they don’t sustain your heart rate elevation as much as vigorous exercise. And for light exercise, they included walking, dancing, bowling, gardening, horseback riding, and golfing. (If they are counting golfing as exercise, I assume the participants were walking and pulling their clubs.)
The bottom line of the study showed that the more physically active the participants were, the lower the risk for developing Alzheimer’s. Even for those who were in the light exercise group, it was helpful because the study found a gradual decrease in Alzheimer’s as the exercise increased in intensity and length of time. So even if you are just starting out on your exercise lifestyle, you are actually working on improving your chances of not developing dementia.
Here are their results on exercising when they compared the participants who did the most vigorous exercise to those who didn’t exercise at all. Listen up to this one.
Those who exercised the most had a 48 percent lower risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
There was a gradual decrease of the risk of developing Alzheimer’s with a gradual increase of exercise. The more exercise, the more protection.
This next statement is even more exciting. If you include both exercise and eating fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans with no meat or dairy, you will be even more protected against Alzheimer’s. The report shows that you can expect around a 60 percent risk reduction with exercise plus diet. I would vote for that any day, wouldn’t you? (Tell all your friends about this report the next time they can’t remember someone’s name.)
Just take a moment to memorize these numbers from this report: 40, 48, and 60. You get a 40 percent decrease in risk of Alzheimer’s with your diet (which matches what the Prescription for Life plan recommends), a 48 percent less risk with exercise, and a 60 percent less risk if you eat right plus exercise. And you know what? If you are doing both of those, I almost guarantee you will automatically get to your ideal weight. Remember the women in the Brown University study? The ones who exercised and dieted lost almost twice the amount of weight as those who only dieted.
Here is one additional point made in this study. Researchers examined a subgroup of older individuals who averaged seventy-seven years of age. They found that, on average, that group didn’t exercise as much, but the exercise they did made a significant difference in their health. Some in this group engaged in approximately 1.3 hours a week of vigorous exercise, others 2.4 hours of moderate physical exercise a week, and others 4 hours of light exercise per week—or a combination of the three types. In other words, some may have run some of the time, played tennis some of the time, and even played a round of golf. But the point made is that even relatively small amounts of exercise are associated with a reduction in the risk for developing Alzheimer’s. As you age, stick to your strategy of exercise to the fullest physical ability you have.
Even if you are elderly and exercise only once a week, that exercise is beneficial in warding off Alzheimer’s. In the early stages of Alzheimer’s, an individual’s thinking begins to become a little obscure. Their reasoning, their thought process, their rational thinking all begin to change and then just get worse. That is called their cognitive function. In the journal Neurology, a study was published that shows older people who exercise at least once a week are 30 percent more likely to maintain their cognitive function than those who don’t exercise at all. Defeating dementia is a great bonus most do not even consider when they think about exercising.
Don’t forget—exercising is one of the most important things you can do to prevent dementia.
Exercise and Colon Cancer
The benefits of exercise go beyond strengthening the heart and helping to prevent strokes and dementia. The American Institute for Cancer Research reviewed twenty studies concerning the relationship of colon cancer to exercise. Seventeen of those studies found that exercise protects against colon cancer. Their conclusion was stated as follows: “The evidence that physical activity protects against colon cancer is convincing.”
Colon cancer is the third leading cancer in both men and women. Let that sink in a minute, because you can do something to prevent being one of those statistics. I had always thought of exercise as improving my heart. But even though I had operated on colon cancer numerous times before, I had never thought much about the effect exercise has on colon cancer. Then I started reading articles like the one just mentioned and realized the positive effect exercise has in protecting against colon cancer.
Exercise and How You Feel
We go from talking about preventing colon cancer to the effect exercise has on how you feel. You don’t have to exercise much to realize that you feel better mentally after exercising. That is due to the release of the “feel good” chemical endorphin. Endorphin is released into your body when you exercise. The next time you are feeling low and know you should exercise but are contemplating just sitting down and staring at something, go ahead and exercise and see how you will be lifted up psychologically.
There is an entire section on erectile dysfunction later, but I want to mention here some of the effects exercise has on the problem. A recent study of men forty to seventy-five years old showed that physical activity and physical fitness played a significant role in preventing the dysfunction. The study concluded that the men who exercised regularly were less likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction.
Another article from the Archives of Internal Medicine was more specific with the numbers. It stressed two factors related to erectile dysfunction: obesity and exercise. Researchers reported evidence that obesity resulted in a 30 percent higher rate of erectile dysfunction, while exercise was associated with a 30 percent lower risk of the problem.
There is yet another related article in the journal Urology concerning men who are in midlife. The study showed that men who initiated physical activity in midlife had a 70 percent reduced risk for developing erectile dysfunction versus the couch potato men—those who were sedentary.
Whenever you exercise, remind yourself of all these beneficial effects your workout has on your body. It not only has a powerful effect on your longevity but also
So are you ready to get started? I’ll see you at the gym.