Exercise: how it helps the heart.
Understanding exercise
Lower triglycerides
Raise HDL
Help hypertension
Help weight control
Help diabetes
Understanding exercise
Exercise needs energy. For instance, in jogging, your muscles first burn sugar which is inside the muscle cell or readily available in the blood feeding the muscle. This lasts four to seven minutes. Then your blood sugar starts to drop. Your muscles then turn to glycogen for energy. Glycogen is sugar molecules stuck togerher in chains like popping beads. Your muscles pop a sugar off for energy as is needed. Your muscles have a store of glycogen, and there is more in the liver. When the muscle runs short of glycogen after five to eleven minutes they turn to triglycerides (free fatty acids) for energy.
Triglycerides are an oily kind of fat. They are made from carbohydrate in the diet. They are made in the liver. They are used for energy during prolonged exercise. They are carried on lipoproteins, fat-carrying proteins.
Lower triglycerides
The longer you exercise beyond eleven to fourteen minutes the more you burn triglycerides. (All these time estimates are approximate, and vary very much with your fitness level and with your genetics. Joggers can estimate their energy use as glucose - sugar - 0-7 minutes: glycogen 7-14 minutes: triglycerisdes 14 minutes +.)
Triglycerides are carried on lipoproteins. A part of becoming fit is the change in your body to increase glycogen storage and to make more lipoproteins to carry the triglycerides.
Gentle, steady exercise such as fast walking or slow jogging efficiently burns triglycerides. The longer you exercise, the more triglyceride you burn.
Raise HDL
HDL is the large lipoprotein that carries cholesterol throughout the body. It carries cholesterol to the organs that need it, and brings the excess back to the liver for destruction. If your cholesterol is stuck on a low density lipoprotein, it can be broken off in the arteries and accumulate there.
As explained above, when you exercise, your body manufactures more lipoproteins. Even though the body is trying to increase the ability to carry triglycerides which are carried on LDL, it makes HDL too! A bonus.
Exercise raised HDL. - Good!
Help hypertension.
Blood pressure, especially diastolic blood pressure, rises during exercise to push more blood to the muscles. When you stop, your blood pressure drops again. Indeed it drops lower than before exercise. And it stays lower for some time. The more you exercise, the greater the drop towards normal and the longer the length of time it stays down. Exercise also helps with weight. (See below). The less there is of us, the easier the job for the heart to distribute blood throughout the body.
Regular exercise helps lowers blood pressure.
Help weight control.
Exercise uses energy. This improves the equation ENERGY USED - ENERGY STORED. Excess fat is caused by not using enough of our food energy, and storing too much.
Exercise also helps how we store energy. If we exercise regularly, we need more glycogen and other short term energy molecules. Whe we eat, the body stores food energy more as glycogen and less as fat.
"Southern drift". How diet and exercise may make you "bottom heavy."
Their are different kinds of fat. The fat we store around the waist is particularly easy for the body to make into cholesterol or energy. Fat on hips and buttocks is long term storage fat and is harder for the body to get at to make cholesterol or energy. As we exercise we burn more of the waist-fat, less of the hip-fat. Sorry folks, exercise is a great way to help your heart, but not your hips. Women especially will lose the "soft" fat from the breasts and abdomen before the "hard" fat on hips and buttocks.
"YoYo" dieting has the bad effect of moving fat from your bust to your buttocks. When you diet and exercise successfully, you lose more fat from your chest than from your hips and buttocks. When you go off your diet you gain more on the hips and buttocks, less on the chest.
If you go through cycles of gaining and losing, and each time you lose 2 lbs from the top more than from the bottom, after three cycles you are the same weight but 6 lbs are on your lower end, 6 lbs less on your top.
A US study shows that walking is enough to lower weight. Click here
Help diabetes.
Exercise burns calories. These calories no longer are a burden on the insulin system, so diabetes control is better. Indeed the whole system of using and storing energy is given a tune-up and all aspects improve. One diabetic colleague who needed insulin started exercising on an exercise bicycle for 30 minutes a day. He found he needed 8 units a day less insulin. And he was able to have a glass of red wine a day without disturbing his control.
