It’s hard to find the motivation to work out. Busy mornings get in the way, and after a stressful day, it’s too easy to head home and park in front of the television. But regularly exercising is an important habit to develop – and it does a lot more than transform the body’s outward appearance. Dr. Thomas Best, medical director of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s Health and Fitness Center at the Philip Heit Center for Healthy New Albany, says a consistent fitness routine can do wonders when it comes to improving mental health and fighting off common killers. Sometimes, he says, a little movement is even better than a prescribed remedy.
What are some basic exercises anyone, regardless of fitness level or age, can take part in to improve their overall health? Are there some that even healthy people tend to overlook?
First of all, some exercise is better than none. As far as basic exercises, remember that, ideally, you need to get both cardiovascular (brisk walking/jogging/swimming/biking) along with strength training of the major muscle groups (upper and lower body).
When people think of exercise, they usually think of cardiovascular and forget that strength exercises are important as well. You ideally want to get both components. As far as one exercise that everyone can do, that’s probably impossible to identify. For example, conditions such as obesity and osteoarthritis can make many forms of exercise quite challenging early on in starting a program. It should be something people enjoy doing.
What healing qualities do these exercises have?
Exercise promotes blood flow to the working muscles and organ systems. That increased blood flow helps with tissue repair and healing. Strength training doesn’t really heal, but it makes you stronger through muscle breakdown and repair. You lift a weight, and you break down the muscle so when it repairs itself it’s stronger.
Exercise is usually connected to physical health, but what are some specific benefits it has for mental health?
Exercise has been shown to increase mental alertness, help manage medical conditions such as depression and anxiety, and help with higher order brain function, such as calculations and reasoning. There are studies showing that exercise for depression is as effective as, if not more effective than, antidepressant medications. And with dementia, exercise can not only improve symptoms and quality of life, but may delay its onset.
To reap the full health benefits of exercising, how often should we be hitting the gym and for how long? What are some personal attributes that might affect those numbers for different people?
Again, let’s emphasize that some exercise is better than none. The current recommendations are a minimum of 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise on some, if not all, days of the week, and strength training of the major muscle groups two or three days a week.
But the issue is implementation. How do we get people to exercise? You should do what you like to do, or else you’re likely going to stop exercising. Even if you get 10 minutes a day, that’s better than nothing. Especially for people with arthritis; they just can’t do a lot.
Is there too much of a reliance on prescription drugs when we should be focusing on moving more? What are some simple health problems that can be dealt with more effectively with exercise than with medication?
With almost every medical problem, exercise has been shown to be as effective as, if not superior to, prescription medications. Exercise is the most powerful medicine we can prescribe for our patients. You can treat illness, you can lower blood pressure, you can better control cholesterol, and it just goes on and on.
We’re not doing a good job of prescribing physical activity instead of medicine. Many thought leaders believe physical inactivity is the No. 1 medical condition in this country as well as worldwide.
Some of the leading causes of death in America are heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes. How can regular exercise help combat these common killers?
There’s very good data that exercise has the same power as medication for managing heart disease and diabetes, and that exercise is great for reducing cognitive problems associated with Alzheimer's disease. With cancer, there’s good data on both primary and secondary prevention for breast cancer, and that data is starting to emerge for other cancers as well.
Plenty of people think of exercise as a means to change their outward appearance or the numbers on the scale. How can we start focusing on the ways exercise benefits us internally?
Studies have shown that is better to be fat and fit rather than skinny and unfit. The most important thing to measure in regards to your health may not be your body mass index, but rather the amount of physical activity you accumulate on a regular basis.
Our society tends to want to see immediate results. Aside from weight loss, what are some signs that increased exercise is improving our overall physical and mental health?
Listen to your body; don’t follow numbers. You should feel better overall. You should feel sharper; you should sleep better. Focusing on things like your weight is not the right thing to do.
If we’re regularly exercising, is there anything we need to cut out of our lifestyle – besides the obvious; smoking, excessive sugar, etc. – so we don’t counteract progress?
The importance of proper amounts of sleep and rest cannot be overemphasized in terms of one’s overall health. Remember that proper amounts of exercise also contribute to one’s longevity. There’s some data to suggest that those who exercise regularly can add up to three years to their life. We also need to acknowledge the importance of proper nutrition. Over the past decade there’s been a renewed interest in the importance of proper amounts of exercise in conjunction with good nutritional habits to optimize one’s well-being.
About the Expert
Thomas Best, MD, PhD, FACSM
Thomas Best is medical director of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s Health and Fitness Center at the Philip Heit Center for Healthy New Albany. He also is professor of family medicine, Pomerene Chair of primary care, vice chairman for academic affairs and professor of biomedical engineering. He served as a reviewer for the most recent federal guidelines for physical activity.
Best is a 1988 graduate from the University of Western Ontario. His clinical interests involve the care and prevention of physical activity-related injuries, and his research focuses on soft tissue injury and healing. He treats professional athletes as well as high school athletes and those across the lifespan who simply want to remain or become physically active.
Best, who has lectured worldwide, recently published the second edition of his book, Evidence-Based Sports Medicine, serves on the editorial boards of sports medicine journals and is part of the board of directors of the U.S. Bone and Joint Initiative and the advisory board for the National Youth Sport Safety Initiative. As a past president of the American College of Sports Medicine, the world’s largest multidisciplinary group of health care providers and scientists dedicated to health promotion through exercise and physical activity, he is one of the founding members of ACSM’s “Exercise is Medicine” initiative dedicated to increasing awareness of the importance of physical activity and it’s assessment by the health care system.
The Heit Center Connection
Best first met Phil Heit about five years ago during Best’s year as president of the American College of Sports Medicine. The dream of New Albany becoming the “healthiest community in America” was a part of that initial conversation.
“From that point forward, our efforts were highly synergistic with that goal in mind,” Best says.
“My background as both a family physician and sports medicine practitioner provides me the opportunity to try and influence the health of our patients through recognition of the importance of physical activity and nutrition utilizing the vast resources available at Healthy New Albany,” he says.
