Health and Fitness

As we get older we may silently wonder to ourselves how will we fare in the last stages of our life. Are we going to be lucky and not get some dreaded disease and remain fit and well right up to the time we go to meet our maker? Or the flip side of the coin is the possibility that we are going to become frail, incapacitated and incapable of taking care of ourselves, therefore dependent on our family, community and society for our care. And more importantly do we have any influence or control in this matter?

We used to accept with a shrug the inevitable decline in a persons physical and mental abilities as they grew older. Maybe we can remember our grandparents, thin, frail and weak. Maybe they could not take care of themselves and were forced to go into a nursing home.

The process of humans losing their…

Almost everyone should lift weights. Weight lifting strengthens bones, muscles ligaments and tendons; increases coordination for tasks requiring strength; and gives confidence and mobility to elderly or disabled people.

Just exercising doesn’t do much to strengthen muscles. If it did, marathon runners would have the largest muscles. To become strong, you have to exercise your muscles against progressively greater resistance.

Just exercising doesn’t strengthen bones either. Female marathon runners sometimes stop menstruating and lose tremendous amounts of bone, even though they may run more than 100 miles a week. To regain bone, they have to eat more food which will usually start them menstruating again, and include weight-lifting in their workouts. They may also need to take estrogen.

Many people with muscle or nerve diseases can also benefit from lifting weights. They may be unable to work out as long or as hard as a healthy person and they will take longer to…