This is the everything-you-need-to-know-to-be-as-healthy-as-possible newsletter, brought to you by Kristy Russ, pharmacist and health consultant. I have over 16 years experience in helping people improve their health. I specialize in nutritional medicine, which is the secret of "true" preventative medicine. Yes, if I'm successful in getting people to follow my advice, I will put myself out of a job.

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Do you REALLY know why exercise is so important?

More than 60% of adults and nearly half of the young population 12-21 years are not regularly active, and 25% are not active at all. Physical inactivity poses a major public health concern for reducing unnecessary illness and premature death.

It's almost impossible to list all of the benefits of exercise, especially since new studies keep showing more benefits, but I'll try to list most of them:

• Improves health by reducing the risk of developing: heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, and colon cancer. Of course, it helps in the treatment of all of these diseases also.
• Improves energy & strength.
• Improves sleep.
• Helps build and maintain healthy bones, muscles and joints.
• Reduces feelings of depression and anxiety, as well as improving overall psychological well-being (perhaps by lowering stress or knowing that you look and feel better).
• Improves memory & less cognitive decline.
• Helps you lose and keep off weight- it is absolutely essential for the success of any weight loss program.

  There's 2 reasons for this:

  1. Maintain or increase metabolism- By exercising, you keep or increase your muscle mass which maintains or increases your metabolism. Metabolism is the amount of calories you burn just sitting there. If you just decrease your calories without exercise, you'll decrease your metabolism and if you ever stray from that diet and go back to your old ways of eating, you'll gain all that weight back, plus more.
  2. Increasing insulin sensitivity- Remember when I was talking about low glycemic eating and how not eating that way could make your body become insensitive to insulin? If not, check out the back issues at the bottom of this e-zine.

     Well, inactivity is another MAJOR cause of insulin resistance. Muscles are the first cells to develop resistance because if they’re not being used, they don’t need glucose from insulin for energy.

     Think of insulin like a door-to-door salesman- it has all this glucose to get rid of & it keeps knocking on the doors of your cells. Your brain & heart & all your organs are always working, so they always answer the door at first and take the glucose. Your inactive muscles though keep saying “I don’t need any”. After awhile, the muscle starts ignoring the doorbell once in awhile. But there’s a quota, so then the body sends out more insulin salesmen to increase the chances of getting in.

     Finally, the muscles just stop answering the door altogether. In the meantime, the insulin salesmen have been putting the glucose in storage in your fat cells because they’re confident you’re going to need it later and fat cells will always take more glucose. Yes, the body is very efficient and doesn’t like to waste energy. That’s why you need to correct the insulin resistance so you stop storing all your energy as fat.

     So exercise not only burns calories, but it increases your sensitivity to insulin. And this is really the most important benefit. The energy you use in an exercise program is not the reason for losing weight- it’s because you’re more sensitive to your insulin & the glucose is going into your muscles & being used, rather than being stored as fat. The amount of calories burned is insignificant compared to the metabolic change of reversing insulin resistance. That's why a weight loss program is useless without combining both a low glycemic diet & exercise - calories in vs. calories out isn't actually accurate.

• Decreases risk of death from any cause. A study showed a person's exercise capacity was a more powerful predictor of death than any other risk factor. So regardless of any other risk factors you have, if you're physicall fit, you can cut your risk of premature death in half.

I think everyone knows exercise makes you healthier right? Here are the best tips for making it part of your life:

• Schedule it into your day like an appointment. Trying to "fit it in" to an already overbooked schedule will never work. The schedule will always win. You MUST schedule it as an un-breakable appointment.
• Schedule it during another activity. It doesn't have to be consecutive minutes. Walk around the block while you're waiting for your kids at one of their activities. Park 10 minutes away from work. Take the stairs. Do 10 pushups while supper is cooking... Have a critical look at your schedule and be creative
• Make a commitment with a friend. If you need to make an excuse to someone you're much less likely to cancel. Can't find someone willing to commit with you? Make a commitment to a neighbor that you'll walk their dog 3 times a week.
• Choose something you enjoy doing. Nothing will de-rail a workout program faster than feeling like it's work. A workout program doesn't have to mean an exercise class or the gym. Join a team, go dancing, play one of those new active video games, play with your kids...

Because Laughter Really IS Good Medicine...

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Nutrition News

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How To Stick To Your Healthy Eating Resolution

Make Winter Fun, Prevent Cold-Weather Blues By Establishing Healthy Traditions

See you next month...

Good Health to You,

Kristy Russ, BScPharm Pharmacist and Health Consultant

P.S. Give your body the best nutrition possible. You'll not only feel better now, but you'll also have that quality of life in the future that you've always imagined for yourself. Click here to find out more.