Entries Tagged 'Fitness' ↓

Are you sniffling, sneezing and coughing? If you’re like most people, you probably don’t relish the thought of lacing up your sneakers and hitting the road (or the gym) when you have a cold or flu. But those who persevere when they’re sick and don’t break their exercise routine may be on to something. Some experts argue that moderate exercise can actually have a beneficial effect on cold symptoms, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. Exercising with a fever will make you more susceptible to dehydration and other ill effects. Exercisers in general tend to catch fewer colds than their sedentary counterparts, research suggests. If done regularly, moderate exercise can halve the number of days you spend with cold symptoms, according to a series of studies conducted in the 1990s. While working out may help fend off viruses, even the most dedicated gym goer will come down with a cold at some point.

Not everyone who feels under the weather should exercise, however.

Experts like to cite a rule of thumb known as the “neck rule.” If your symptoms are all located above your neck (stuffy nose, scratchy throat, headache), you almost certainly have a head cold and can hit the road or treadmill safely. If, on the other hand, you have a fever, congestion in your chest and lungs, or feel achy, it is probably a sign of flu, bronchitis, or another more serious ailment, and you should rest up. (Exercising with a fever will make you more vulnerable to dehydration, among other ill effects.)  But the neck rule isn’t foolproof, and a little common sense is always a good idea. “The above-the-neck rule is a good one, but I’d say severe above-the-neck symptoms warrant cessation from regular exercise until the symptoms abate,” says Jeffrey Woods, PhD, professor of kinesiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Even Olympic athletes need a day or two off every once in a while.”

Even if you pass the neck test and are determined to get a workout in, you should take it easy at first. “To be prudent, I’d recommend cutting exercise duration and intensity when symptoms are present,” says Woods.

Daryl Rosenbaum, MD, director of the Sports Medicine Fellowship at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, recommends that people with colds begin working out at 50 percent intensity. If symptoms improve after the first five to 10 minutes (as they often do), you can gradually increase the length and effort of your workout up to about 80 percent to 90 percent of your usual routine.

“Moderation is the key,” says Dr. Rosenbaum. “Studies have shown that people suffering from the common cold who get up and get moving actually feel better. If you go too far, however — either with extreme short-term activity or long-term overtraining — the immune system weakens. A viral cold that is allowed to linger for longer than normal could create sinus conditions that are ripe for a bacterial sinusitis to take over.”

There are some other precautions to keep in mind. Staying hydrated during exercise is always important; it is especially so if you’re planning to exercise with a cold. The nasal drainage associated with colds can hasten dehydration, and some over-the-counter cold remedies containing antihistamines (many cough syrups, for instance) can dry you out further, Dr. Rosenbaum points out.

Don’t spread — or catch — more germs at the gym

If you work out in a public gym, be extra vigilant when exercising with a cold. Germs can be transmitted through the air and through any person-to-person contact, so if you use a treadmill, gym mat, or barbells, be sure to be extra careful when it comes to wiping down the equipment. And avoid touching your face after handling equipment; you can pick up germs that will be more likely to infiltrate your body that way.

Your vulnerability to upper respiratory tract infections spikes for several hours starting just after a strenuous workout, studies suggest. So if you’ve just stepped off the treadmill after a 10-mile run, give that sweating, coughing, and sniffling stranger in the locker room a wide berth.

“Regardless of whether you’re exercising moderately or intensely, you want to take precautions against infection,” says Woods. “Clean your exercise equipment before and after, use a clean cup to get water from the fountain, and try to pick a machine away from other people.”

Article brought to you by CNN/HEALTH.

Please join us at the SBSD Mud Run 2009 which will be held on Saturday - Sept 12th, 2009, at 8:00 a.m., at the Sheriff’s Training Center in San Bernardino!!!  We are looking forward to fun in the sun and mud.  Go to www.active.com for further details.

We did this event last year. It was a blast. Lets all get out there and have a great time.

Your Personal Trainers,

Eric and Nargiz Bravo

Whittier, CA
 

Here is a great article from Parents magazine. This especially goes out to our expecting clients. 

 Women who want to maintain a high exercise level during pregnancy may be frustrated at the outdated (”keep your heart rate below 140″) and vague (”stop exercising if you feel tired”) information they find. “Physicians aren’t trained to counsel pregnant women about exercise,” says James Pivarnik, PhD, vice president of the American College of Sports Medicine. “It’s a rare bird who keeps up with the exercise and pregnancy literature.” Doctors may have you believe that we know little about how exercise affects pregnant women. But in reality, we know quite a bit — and it’s good news for runners, cyclists, and gym rats who are moms-to-be. “If a woman is having a normal pregnancy, she can continue to exercise, and the upper limit of the level can be reasonably close to what she was doing before pregnancy,” Pivarnik says.

Will Exercise Harm My Baby?

The first thing that most newly pregnant exercisers worry about is miscarriage — thanks to age-old myths that have women believe that a bout of strenuous exercise can harm the baby. “There is no real evidence that exercise is linked to miscarriage,” says Bruce K. Young, MD, coauthor of Miscarriage, Medicine & Miracles(Bantam) and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at New York University School of Medicine. Heavy exercise isn’t going to hurt your baby, but it will tire you more quickly than it did prepregnancy. The amount of blood a woman has increases during pregnancy by about 50 percent, and her heart needs to work harder to push all that blood around — including circulating it through the placenta, an extra organ. “That means the stress on your heart will be 50 percent greater for the same exercise that you were doing before pregnancy,” Dr. Young says. So you can work just as hard doing less than you did before you were pregnant.

Pregnancy isn’t the time to push yourself to the max, but it’s also okay — and good for you — to get your heart rate up with cardiovascular exercise. Although a target heart rate of 140 is a number that’s often cited, there’s no precise number to shoot for. When prenatal trainer Erinn Mikeska, owner of Delivering Fitness, in Dallas, works with pregnant women, she has them monitor their rate of perceived exertion (RPE) — how hard they feel they’re working, on a scale from 1 to 10. “You probably want to stay around 5 or 6,” she says. In the first trimester, when you’re not any bigger and don’t yet have balance issues, you may be able to exert yourself more if you’re not too tired.

How Will I Feel While Exercising During Pregnancy?

Pregnant women often notice that they feel out of breath more quickly than they used to. You may assume this is a sign that you’re out of shape. In fact, during pregnancy you’re breathing 20 to 25 percent more air because you need to get rid of the carbon dioxide levels in your own blood — and in your baby’s. (Babies in utero aren’t breathing on their own, but they’re still producing carbon dioxide, which transfers to the mother’s blood. She needs to breathe more so she can get rid of it.) “So breathing more doesn’t mean you’re any less fit,” explains Dennis Jensen, PhD, lead researcher on a Queen’s University study of exercise and respiratory discomfort during pregnancy. It simply means that your body is adapting exactly as it should.

Jensen’s research found that when pregnant women exercised to fatigue on a stationary bike at 20, 28, and 36 weeks, their maximal aerobic capacity (how hard they could work) was well preserved, even though they were breathing more.

What Exercise Should I Avoid During Pregnancy?

For women who are already in top shape, exercising during pregnancy is about maintaining their fitness, not about making fitness gains, Pivarnik says. “Even if I had tried to take it to a new level, my body wouldn’t have let me,” Amy Hyland says. Before Hyland got pregnant with her first son four years ago, she was a triathlete who had completed an Ironman, and she exercised six or seven days a week. She was determined to stay active during pregnancy and continued to run, swim, and even ride her bike. “For me, it was about maintaining fitness, not training hard,” she says. Hyland even did a duathlon (a run/bike/run event) at five months. “My doctor just told me to stop if I had any pain.” She finished just fine — though certainly not in record time. For most pregnant women, the fear of working out too hard is likely a misplaced worry because the pregnant body has a way of both imposing its own limits and adapting.

While there are some things to avoid, such as scuba diving, horseback riding, or any contact sport that could cause blunt-force trauma to the abdomen, there’s relatively little that pregnant women can’t do. Even the longstanding prohibition against exercising on your back is somewhat of a myth, Dr. Young says. It’s true that lying flat on your back late in your pregnancy can cause your growing uterus to push down on the veins whose job it is to deliver blood, leading to decreased blood flow. “Blood can get shunted away from the uterus, and you might feel light-headed,” Dr. Young says. But performing exercises on your back for a short period (such as a series of Pilates moves) is not likely to do any harm, and you would feel uncomfortable long before your blood flow was compromised, he explains.

Can Exercise Help with Pregnancy Mood Swings?

Hyland didn’t just exercise to stay in shape; it also helped lift her mood. “I was so happy to be able to get outside and jog for 45 minutes,” she says. In fact, exercise keeps your endorphins (your body’s natural “happy” chemicals) flowing, Mikeska says. That’s a crucial benefit, especially since we now know that there are more mood disturbances during pregnancy than postpartum, due to the massive influx of extra estrogen and progesterone (hormones linked closely to mood), says Melanie Poudevigne, PhD, health and fitness management program coordinator at Clayton State University, in Morrow, Georgia.

Psychologically speaking, pregnancy can also be stressful because it’s full of so many unknowns. “That perceived lack of control makes pregnant women very vulnerable to mood disturbances,” Poudevigne says. She and her colleagues recently conducted a study where they led sedentary pregnant women with lower-back pain through a moderate-intensity weight-training program. It not only curbed the pain, it also lifted the women’s moods, Poudevigne says. They learned how to monitor their discomfort levels, and came to feel that they were more in control of their own bodies.

When Should I Stop Exercising?

Pivarnik suggests that pregnant women who exercise monitor signs of potential problems, keeping in mind that if there’s something wrong with the pregnancy, it’s not caused by exercise. Rather, exercise might provide that extra bit of stress that brings the problem to the forefront. “Don’t ignore these symptoms (see below), especially if they keep happening when you exercise,” Pivarnik says. Stop exercising and consult your doctor if you have:

• Vaginal bleeding
• Abdominal cramping
• Light-headedness
• Excessive nausea
• Extreme headaches

A Trimester-by-Trimester Guide to Exercise

First Trimester Tips

• You can pretty much continue doing exactly what you were doing before pregnancy (including lifting the same amount of weight).
• Now is a smart time to get involved in a prenatal yoga or Pilates class; it’s a great habit to carry throughout your pregnancy (plus, you’ll get to be around other pregnant women).
• If you feel sluggish, try decreasing either the intensity or the duration of your workout rather than skipping the workout altogether (example: drop your jogging pace by 30 seconds a mile, or cut your bike ride a few miles short).

Second Trimester Tips

• Your heart is starting to work harder to circulate all the blood you built up during the first three months. Cut back your cardio intensity by 20 to 30 percent, says Dr. Young. You’ll still feel as if you’re working just as hard.
• Avoid inversions (such as Downward Dog in yoga) if you feel at all light-headed.
• If you’re a cyclist, consider switching to the stationary bike or to a Spinning class; your growing belly can make balancing on a bicycle tricky.

Third Trimester Tips

• Your joints are more vulnerable, so beware of heavy (15 pounds or more) weights; opt instead for more repetitions, says Pivarnik.
• Do free-weight exercises seated, if possible, because you’ll want your back supported (plus it’s hard to balance while standing up).
• You can continue with your cardio right up until you deliver, but don’t be surprised if you can walk faster than you can jog. Many pregnant women find that supporting their belly (with something like the Belly Band) during cardio helps take the pressure off.
• Now is a great time to try swimming: You’ll feel wonderfully weightless in the water, and it won’t stress your joints.

Great article.

Your Personal Trainers,

Eric and Nargiz Bravo.

Whittier, Ca.

Thank you to all the clients that turned out this morning for The Firecracker 5/10K race in Chinatown. It was cold and wet but we did the race anyway. I’m very proud of our clients who came out and supported the event. For some of them it was their first event. Everyone enjoyed themselves and what better way to start your morning then with a great run. Keep checking our site for our next event in March. You guys rock!

I get this question all the time from my clients. Read this article in full.

You have what seems to be a really bad cold. You are coughing and sneezing, and it is hard to breathe. Should you work out?

And if you do, should you push yourself as hard as ever or take it easy? Will exercise have no effect, or make you feel better or worse?

Two little-known studies that were published a decade ago in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise showed results so much in favor of exercise that the researchers themselves were surprised.

The investigators found no difference in symptoms between those who exercised and those who rested. And there was no difference in the time it took to recover from the colds. But when the exercisers assessed their symptoms, people said they felt O.K. and, in some cases, they actually felt better.

Now, Dr. Leonard Kaminsky, an exercise physiologist at Ball State University, and others at Ball State encourage people to exercise when they have colds, at least if they have the type producing symptoms like runny noses and sneezing.

He is more cautious about other types of colds that produce fevers or symptoms below the neck such as chest congestion. Exercising with a head cold is not an issue for athletes, Dr. Kaminsky said, because most of them want to train no matter what. “If anything they tend to push too much,” he said.

Sources:

• The New York Times December 24, 2008

• Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise May 1997; 29(5):604-9

• Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise November 1998; 30(11):1578-83

Please be courteous to others. When you are sick, please call in. We will reschedule your appointments. There is alot of recent evidence showing that the suppressed immune system may be a result of Vitamin D deficiency. So go for a great walk in the sun. I hope you found this info helpful.

Your Personal Trainer,

Eric Bravo.

Serving Whittier  Ca for 15 years.