Lifestyle
Exercise, a Natural Medicine!
By
Jan 26, 2008 - 9:54:25 AM

Exercise, a Natural Medicine!

(HealthNewsDigest.com) - Exercise is a natural medicine and let's consider that "Exercise is Medicine". Exercise is Medicine (http://www.exerciseismedicine.org/about.htm) is the trademark for a newly founded National Initiative that "Junefit" (that's me!) is pleased to have been appointed to as a supporting organization. Natural Medicine or Naturopathic Medicine as it is formally known, is gaining popularity among Americans and it is a system of medicine that focuses on the prevention of disease using natural therapies and products for both prevention and treatment. For instance, Botanical Medicine uses plants that have been historically safe and non toxic. Clinical Nutrition, uses whole foods and nutritional supplements and is another therapy of natural medicine. But today let's discuss my favorite medicine, "Exercise" because, how many of us view exercise as medicine for our body?

Natural medicine and now traditional medicine, view exercise as vital to our health and well being. Why? Regular exercise benefits every body system! Here's how.

Exercise will
Increase our muscular strength, muscular endurance, and increase our bone density; all which will lessen the chance of injury. As we strengthen our musculoskelatal system, we will function better in our daily lives and look better to boot.

Strengthen our cardiovascular system including our heart (our heart is a muscle), help to maintain elasticity of our blood vessels, help to lower our blood pressure, lower our heart rate, raise our HDL levels (that's the good cholesterol found in our blood), increase our circulation and delivery of oxygen and nutrients to our body and brain (this enhances our musculoskelatal system and daily functioning not to mention lowering our cardiovascular disease risk).

Improve our digestion, elimination , our body's usage of body fat stores as a source of fuel for energy (isn't this an important one!), and weight management efforts. It will lower our risk of diabetes and help us utilize all those sugars we eat (the ones we're trying to avoid?). It will also strengthen our immune system and increase our energy levels.

Help to improve our mental and emotional processes. When we naturally increase our circulation, energy levels, daily functioning, and overall health, we improve our ability to think. We provide ourselves with a healthy stress and tension reliever, aid our sleep and naturally help to improve our mood when we exercise. Exercise has been shown to be as effective as some medications to relieve mild depression, is free and as long as we exercise safely, it is without side effects. Lastly according to my source, for every hour we exercise, there is a two hour increase added to our life (one reason is that a stronger heart doesn't work as hard and doesn't have to produce as many heart beats over a lifetime!). Isn't this a great example of anti-aging?

Aid our Immune System. Regular moderate exercise has been shown in many studies to increase the production and proliferation of key immune cells, which of course fight disease!

A regular exercise program can help us to prevent disease but it can also give us a head start to fight disease if we need to, by our having a healthier and stronger body state as a baseline.

So if we compare Naturopathic medicine with Allopathic medicine (traditional western medicine), Naturopathic medicine works to prevent disease and create the optimum health state, while traditionally, Allopathic medicine treats existing disease. But we can't go wrong starting and maintaining a regular exercise program because exercise is a therapy and lifestyle recommended by both medical disciplines!

Here's to Exercise, a Natural Medicine!


June M. Lay M.S.
www.junefit.com
Next week we'll continue with our tool "Start Early" with breakfast foods.

I'm pleased to announce that Junefit is a supporting organization and member of "Exercise is Medicine" a group of physicians, corporations and governmental agencies managed by the American College of Sports Medicine to advance the cause of Exercise as a medicine. For more info go to: http://www.exerciseismedicine.org/supporters.htm

Source: Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine; Murray, Pizzorno. Looking for a Naturopathic physician or more info? Go to http://www.naturopathic.org/ or more info on Alternative/Complimentary Medicine and Natural Therapies? Go to http://nccam.nih.gov/health/

Need some support getting started on weight loss in the New Year? Find a partner at Weight Loss Buddy (http://weightlossbuddy.com/)

Junefit ranks top 10 at Google for "fitness tips" search out of millions of results!

Junefit is included in Google's top ranked women's health resources http://directory.google.com/Top/Health/Women's_Health/Resources/

June is Lifestyle Editor at www.healthnewsdigest.com/news/index.shtml

Check out this great site www.americantowns.com - A source for your local community events, news, real estate, restaurants and more (and where you'll find my tips under community health, of course!).

(c) junefit 2008

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