Participants: Agatha Thrash, Don Miller, John Champen
Series Code: HYTH
Program Code: HYTH000130A
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00:01 Hello, I'm Agatha Thrash a Staff Physician at Uchee Pines
00:06 Institute, at Uchee Pines we encourage people to exercise. 00:11 Have you ever considered the miracle of movement, that we can 00:15 actually make a movement, that we can move muscles? 00:19 Well it's more than a miracle, it's also very practical for us 00:24 to be able to move our muscles, during this next half an hour 00:28 we'll be talking with you about exercise and it's benefits 00:31 for the human body. 00:53 Welcome to Help Yourself To Health 00:55 with Dr. Agatha Thrash of Uchee Pines Institute 00:59 and now here is your host Dr. Thrash. 01:02 Exercise is specific for the individual, some people can 01:08 exercise at a very rapid pace, others need a more slow pace, 01:12 some people can do very heavy exercise, others must do more 01:16 mild exercise, now what we find in individuals who are 01:21 exercising is that they tend to overdo. 01:25 We overdo in a lot of things, we overdo in the way we eat, 01:29 we overdo in our study, we overdo in our work, 01:32 and of course we are prone to overdo when we exercise. 01:36 We may try to keep up with someone else, we may try to 01:39 beat the record that we have had in the past, or we may have 01:43 a certain goal that we have for ourselves and so we really 01:48 screw up the courage and push ourselves and drive ourselves 01:52 to the point that we have some kind of injury to the physical 01:55 body, it may injure the heart, or it may injure the muscle, 02:00 or it may injure the bones, or joints, and in all of these 02:05 the person can be damaged by their great desire to overdo 02:10 their exercise, and to achieve something that they maybe 02:14 are not equipped to achieve. 02:16 Now there are certain signs that you can watch that will let you 02:21 know whether or not you have over exercised. 02:25 Let me discuss a few of these for you: one of those is 02:29 that you are tired after a good night of sleep, a night of sleep 02:33 a night of sleep that you usually have a refreshing 02:37 feeling and you know that you have been restored, but now 02:41 this night you didn't get restored. 02:44 You think back about the exercise that you did yesterday 02:46 and you may have to say yes I overworked, or I over exercised 02:51 yesterday. 02:52 Then another thing that you can use to let you know whether 02:56 or not you have over exercised is your pulse rate. 02:59 If your pulse rate is faster in the morning after a night 03:04 of sleep than it was when you went to bed the night before 03:07 then the chances are pretty good that you have over 03:11 exercised and that that is the problem that you are having 03:15 with that. 03:17 Now another indication that you have over exercised is that you 03:21 are aching in your trunk or in your extremities when you go 03:25 to bed. 03:26 Have you ever noticed when you have had to walk a great 03:30 distance or you have over done the exercise and you know you 03:34 have, that your legs ache and you want to move them in the bed 03:38 and your trunk hurts somewhere, maybe your back or you can't 03:43 get in a comfortable position and it takes you quite awhile 03:46 to get settled down to go to sleep? 03:48 That can be from over exercising and if that is the case with you 03:53 then you can know that you have probably over done it 03:56 there, in such a case you may be to tired to go to sleep 04:00 so it may take you a half an hour when usually it only takes 04:03 you three or four minutes to go to sleep. 04:05 Then another thing that's a sign of over exercising is something 04:10 that people are usually sort of proud of and tease about 04:15 and that is that they feel tender in their muscles and they 04:19 sort of pass it off with a laugh and say well I over did the 04:22 exercise, but actually when your muscles are tender that's 04:26 an indication that you have been over exercising and 04:29 of course it isn't good for you to do that. 04:32 Now there are also some signs of stress in the person who is 04:36 over doing exercise and these signs of stress are the usual 04:41 signs of stress for emotions or for over doing or for any 04:46 kind of other thing that causes us to have stress. 04:49 This may be a fast pulse, an increase in the blood pressure, 04:53 or it may be anxiety or irritability, all of those are 04:58 signs of stress, sometimes people have certain facial 05:03 things they do as a sign of stress, they may bite the lips 05:09 or they may squint the eyes, or do something with the neck 05:15 muscles, all of these can be signs of stress. 05:19 Now with me today to discuss this matter of exercise 05:25 is one of our health educators at Uchee Pines, John Champen 05:28 and John Champen will be talking with you about some matters 05:32 having to do with exercise, John Champen! 05:34 - Thank you Dr. Thrash! 05:36 We are told that perfect health requires perfect circulation 05:40 and perfect circulation requires activity, you cannot have 05:44 perfect circulation unless we are doing something. 05:46 Muscles are indication that we have something that we can 05:51 use, God has provided for us useful labor as an exercise, 05:56 useful labor was designed to strengthen the body to expand 06:00 the mind and to develop the character. 06:02 That was for Adam and is also for us today and we can see 06:07 that there is a great need for us to have the same thing today 06:11 all of the muscles in our bodies need some sort of exercise 06:17 not exercising the body reduces our strength, reduces our sense 06:22 of well being, reduces our circulation and causes us to 06:27 just feel badly sometimes. 06:29 We need to have our bodies in the best possible shape so that 06:33 we can enjoy life and do the things that God has 06:35 called us to do. 06:37 We are going to go to the screen now and look at some of the 06:40 benefits for exercising: 06:46 This is very positive, many men like this but women 06:49 like it also. 06:50 Muscular strength is needed to carry on the duties of life, 06:55 that does not necessarily mean that we have to be weight 06:58 lifters in order to increase our strength but there should be a 07:02 point where that is optimum, where we feel comfortable 07:05 with the things that we have to do and life can go on and we 07:10 can carry them out pretty well. 07:15 Now this is where a lot of men are very much interested in 07:18 but ladies you can also increase the muscle mass to 07:24 where it is comfortable to you, now you don't have to increase 07:27 the resistance of the things that you are doing, you don't 07:30 have to start picking up 150 lbs or 200 lbs, but whatever you are 07:34 doing, it will reach a certain size and a certain mass 07:38 for that kind of exercise and then it can stay right there 07:42 and you don't have to look like you are muscle bound. 07:49 We need the endurance to continually increase until that 07:53 reaches optimum for us too. We need to be able to have 07:57 strength for the entire day of labor, work and activities that 08:02 God has called us to be engaged in. 08:05 Our bodies are strengthened the cartilage becomes thicker 08:09 by exercise and it also strengthens the tendons 08:13 and ligaments. 08:16 Now we are going to look at our next graphic which will 08:19 show you more of the benefits: 08:23 That is good for the ladies especially who might be 08:28 susceptible to osteoporosis. 08:33 Which is another benefit for all of us, it make it easier 08:37 for our hearts to take care of the needs of our bodies. 08:43 Those are those little power houses that are inside our cells 08:45 to help our body to function more efficiently. 08:50 It also increases the glycogen deposits thereby reducing the 08:54 sugar that is in our system. 08:57 There are many benefits of exercise and we will talk about 09:01 more of them in just a moment. Dr. Thrash! 09:04 I appreciated that, I especially enjoyed the physiology of 09:08 muscles because as we study that we come to understand that 09:12 not everything has to be accomplished by one type of 09:16 exercise, but we need to do a wide variety of exercises and 09:22 people need to have imagination and ingenuity in deciding what 09:28 kind of exercise they are going to do. 09:29 Take for instance the women or man who is bound to a 09:36 wheel chair, they can't move the legs, they can still if they 09:40 are able to move the arms, they can still do exercises that 09:44 involve the upper extremities and any way that they can move 09:47 those and they should do those, they should have a certain 09:51 routine that they go through and also let's say the person 09:54 can't move the shoulders or the elbows very well, they might 09:58 still might be able to use something like this, these are 10:01 hand exercisers and the person can just do squeezing of a hand 10:09 gripper such as this, these can be purchased from any 10:12 variety store, or department store such as the 10:16 discount stores. 10:18 It has been shown that simply squeezing one of these hand 10:23 squeezers will make it so that a persons likelihood of getting 10:28 cataracts will diminish rather greatly and also the likelihood 10:32 that a person would get glaucoma which is an increase in the 10:36 pressure in the eyes, that also is greatly decreased by simply 10:40 doing such a small thing as that. 10:43 Sometimes women tell me well I can't exercise because I live 10:47 in a dangerous neighborhood, well I do appreciate that 10:50 and there are several things that a person can do if they 10:52 live in a dangerous neighborhood, one is get a 10:55 companion, sometimes that can be very helpful. 10:57 Especially if that companion is a dog, sometimes a dog can be 11:03 helpful as most people who are intent on doing you some injury 11:08 will think twice before attacking you if you have a 11:13 dog with you, but then sometimes then it's the dog that's the 11:18 problem and if so then you can get one of these things 11:23 which is a mace gun and this little mace gun is a standard 11:27 you can buy this at any department store and it has 11:30 a lock on it so that it can't accidentally be detonated, but 11:36 if you just turn it so that you turn off the little trigger 11:40 then you can spray it and of course it then is very 11:45 irritating to the eyes and nose and mouth but once you do that 11:50 you need to be prepared with something else such as 11:53 a whistle. If you have a whistle then you 11:55 can turn and make your way away while you whistle and that draws 12:03 attention to you and know that you might have a companion to 12:09 the individual that you have sprayed the mace on and that 12:15 person or that animal might put some pursuit, so be ready 12:20 to make another spray with the mace gun if you need to. 12:24 Now I've been interested in the fact that since I was in 12:28 medical school we have changed our attitude quite a lot 12:33 concerning diseases that we used to forbid exercise in. 12:37 Let me just mention a few of these that are instances where 12:42 we used to forbid exercise and now we do recommend exercise: 12:46 One is congestive heart failure, I remember very well that we 12:50 used to tell people, you just sit around and enjoy reading 12:54 and enjoy socializing, call on the telephone and watch TV, 12:57 while you keep your legs elevated so that your feet 13:01 won't swell, and walk as little as you can, you can walk to the 13:04 bed and you can walk to the table and you can walk to the 13:07 bathroom but that's about it. 13:09 But now we tell people that they should do a little exercise 13:13 nothing that is strenuous but it should be done every day 13:17 and should be a little bit progressive so that you can 13:22 increase the capability of the heart to contract and also 13:27 to keep other parts of the body in good health. 13:30 Another area that we used to forbid exercise is hepatitis, I 13:34 remember very well when we had the patient to lie down right 13:40 there and stay there for five weeks, until your liver enzymes 13:46 and liver functions come back to normal, now we don't do that 13:51 we have the person have a certain amount of exercise 13:54 and they do much better, the hepatitis gets better quicker 13:59 and their liver function tests come back to normal 14:02 much quicker. 14:04 Another area is in Tuberculosis, when I was in medical school 14:08 we put the patient to bed, if they coughed we considered that 14:13 exercise and so we gave them an anti-cough medicine such as 14:17 codeine so that they wouldn't cough, we didn't want them to 14:21 move at all. 14:22 They could hold a book and read but that was done in bed 14:26 for the most part, once in awhile we'd let them read 14:29 sitting up, they had certain days a week that they could 14:33 sit in a chair for a certain number of minutes or hours 14:36 but not very much exercise, now we have people 14:40 with Tuberculosis to exercise. 14:43 Then after childbirth, after childbirth we had the woman 14:48 to lie right there in bed and it wasn't to long ago 14:54 but it was before my time in medicine when the woman stayed 14:57 in bed for six weeks, that was 40 days they stayed in bed 15:01 or that is at least what the doctors recommended, now 15:05 we have the person up the same day usually they stay in bed 15:09 for the first hour without moving around a lot, but then 15:12 after the first hour after childbirth then we get them up 15:16 and we have them moving around. 15:17 Hypertension is another one, we used to tell people with 15:20 hypertension, if you exercise it's going to make your 15:24 blood pressure go up and that is true that it may go up some, 15:29 we don't want it to go up a lot and sometimes a blood pressure 15:34 reading during or while the person is exercising or just 15:38 after can tell us how much the person with hypertension 15:43 should exercise. 15:44 Another area where we tell people now to exercise that 15:48 we didn't once tell them and that's in depression, 15:53 now we know that exercise in depression is one of the 15:57 primary treatments for depression, also being very 16:01 regular in one's habits and getting to bed on time, 16:04 getting up early in the morning and going to bed early in the 16:09 evening will do more for the person who has depression 16:15 than most any other treatment that we know. 16:18 Now there is another one and that's if you are retired, 16:22 once when people were retired we would say to them you deserve 16:29 a rest so we want you just to sit there and rest, you don't 16:35 have to even turn your hand to even swat a fly, just sit 16:40 there and rest or take your fishing equipment down by 16:45 the bank of a river and just sit there and fish, but don't 16:51 do any exercise, you don't have to move just enjoy 16:56 what you do without doing any movement at all. 17:00 Now there are more things about exercise and John Champen is 17:04 going to tell you some more things about the fine points 17:08 of exercise, John Champen! 17:10 - One of the points that is very important is that exercise 17:13 neutralizes stress, we live in a very stressful world today 17:17 you turn on the news and look down the street and read the 17:21 newspaper and the stress level goes up, but exercise helps that 17:26 and so God wants us to have that kind of activity that will 17:29 bring down the stress in our lives and give us a better 17:33 heart rate. We're going to go to the screen 17:35 again and look at a few more points: 17:42 Not only little children but teenagers also need to exercise, 17:49 there are some who have become book worms or couch potatoes 17:54 and they are not getting what they need and they won't reach 17:56 their full maturation standard as if they would do if they 18:03 would do if they were exercising. 18:07 That's a very important aspect of exercise, it helps us 18:12 very much to feel better and to get rid of waste. 18:18 or any kind of injury, actually it allows the body to recover 18:25 very quickly. 18:28 A very meaningful experience for most of the people in the 18:33 United States today and in Western countries, 18:36 blood pressure is a real problem among us, so exercise 18:39 helps us to reduce that blood pressure and it improves 18:42 collateral circulation. 18:44 What a blessing exercise is for us, let's go to 18:47 the next one now. 18:50 More benefits of exercise, and also reduces blood cholesterol, 18:57 blood cholesterol is a real problem among us here 19:01 in the United States and this is a real blessing to reduce 19:05 that cholesterol level. 19:07 The cholesterol level is getting higher and higher among us 19:10 as we have been looking to our plates for the health. 19:15 Now there is one more slide that we have here and this is 19:19 when you are exercising you need to have a targeted heart rate 19:22 and it is brought about by: 19:33 That's what you want to be looking for. 19:34 As you exercise, you continue to exercise you will be able to 19:40 bring your resting heart rate down and that's good, 19:44 if you can get your heart rate down where it is not working 19:49 quite as hard, in the 60's is fine, 50's as one gentleman he 19:53 had his down in the 40's, he's very athletic and most people 19:57 will not have their pulse rate down in the 40's, but in the 20:02 50's and 60's is excellent to reach for if your young, 20:07 if you are older it will be a little bit higher, Dr. Thrash! 20:10 - Some people exercise to the point that they injure 20:15 themselves especially that is true of people who do 20:18 competitive sports, and I have here something that I think 20:21 you will be interested in, it is a knee cartilage, 20:25 this knee cartilage shows a tear 20:27 in a place where you would not expect it to be 20:32 because of the fact the individual who owned knee 20:38 cartilage before it was sent to me as a pathologic specimen. 20:42 This person got a tear right there is this knee cartilage, 20:48 knee cartilages are very susceptible to having a problem 20:53 with competitive sports, so I recommend to people who want to 21:00 have some kind of physical exercise that they by all means 21:02 not do competitive sports. 21:04 There are many kinds of sports that a person can do that will 21:08 make life pleasant and enjoyable that don't involve competition 21:13 and competition is much more likely to cause the person to 21:17 get injured because of the drive of the game and the 21:22 determination that the person has to make some kind of very 21:26 special score or mark for them- selves and that of course brings 21:31 the person to have an injury. 21:33 So generally speaking I don't recommend competitive sports 21:38 especially is this so for children, teach your children 21:42 to enjoy the non-competitive sports, hundreds of ways to 21:47 express oneself other than having competitive sports. 21:53 Older people, those who are quite elderly need avoid jolting 21:58 themselves and that would be jumping exercises or that is 22:03 with a heavy jolt, or running exercises, those can be 22:10 a problem for the elderly. 22:11 I have a report here done by some people in Canada that 22:17 showed individuals who had jolting exercises or especially 22:22 that had a single very severe jolt got a stroke from that 22:29 and it is a fact that many people who have strokes have 22:34 the stroke to be preceded by some kind of jolting or 22:39 sudden movement, especially if this jolting or this sudden 22:46 movement is during or after stress. 22:50 Now some people get some kind of pain in the body, in the 22:56 skeleton and they say I know that aspirin will be good for my 23:00 pain and so I'm going to take an aspirin for this pain that I 23:05 have here or there, I don't recommend that, we should 23:09 do either ice or heat treatments to a pain in the 23:13 skeleton brought on by some kind of exercise problem 23:18 and use that instead of aspirin, let me just read some of the 23:22 things that aspirin is noted for, I'll just read something 23:28 that is an excerpt from the New England Journal of Medicine 23:32 or is an abstract from it: Aspirin can be dangerous 23:35 in even conservative estimates, revealed that is responsible 23:41 for as many deaths as AIDS every day. 23:44 Well that puts it in a little bit different light about 23:48 aspirin, so we need to be careful about that. 23:51 In addition to that aspirin can cause blindness, 23:56 the so called macular degeneration that older people 24:00 can get, stomach and intestinal ulcerations are also quite 24:05 common in people who use aspirin, and a certain amount of 24:09 bleeding is expected every day in people who use aspirin 24:13 so that a test for blood in the bowel movement is not possible 24:19 as a general rule in people who have aspirin as a part 24:25 of their daily medication. 24:28 Strokes are more likely to occur in people who are chronic 24:32 aspirin users because of the fact that it encourages bleeding 24:36 and so a bleeding episode might be expected in an individual who 24:44 takes aspirin all the time. 24:49 Now we can build up to much iron in the body and it's an 24:56 interesting thing that exercise will help us to reduce the iron 25:01 level if the iron level is to high. 25:05 But if your iron level is to low exercise can also help you 25:11 bring up your iron level in the blood, so your hemoglobin 25:15 which is a good marker for the iron level in the body, in the 25:20 blood, the hemoglobin will go up with exercise if you need it 25:25 or come down with exercise if that's what you need, 25:29 so we recommend that people who have either extreme of iron 25:35 disorder in the blood that they remember that exercise 25:41 can be a very good way that they help that. 25:45 The roll of exercise in clot prevention has been mentioned 25:52 already and one of the interesting things about that 25:54 is that it reduces platelet stickiness and makes it so that 25:58 platelets don't stick together as well as they once did. 26:02 It increases mental abilities and it reduces the cognitive 26:07 decline that elderly people have as they get older, 26:11 of course it's a help in weight control and it's an interesting 26:17 thing that it even helps people with such disorders as 26:21 Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's disease to slow down 26:26 these diseases, now it may be that we cannot stop Parkinson's 26:32 or Alzheimer's but we can slow down the process so that the 26:38 person remains functional and remains in the work force much 26:44 longer than could be expected otherwise. 26:46 Now sometimes it is not possible for you to exercise right after 26:52 a meal which is a good time to put mild exercise and 26:56 remember that singing is also exercise, so for individuals 27:01 who are house bound or chair bound, or bed bound remember 27:05 that singing is a good exercise and help them to sing 27:08 very frequently. 27:09 Sometimes people may need to get a massage which is one form 27:14 of passive exercise, probably my very favorite form of 27:18 passive exercise is that of the massage. 27:21 We should also try to use every opportunity that we can to 27:27 exercise such as hanging out clothes rather than using 27:31 a dryer or every time the telephone rings stand up to 27:36 to answer it, rather than answering it without standing up 27:38 and so we can see that there are a lot of very good things that 27:43 we can do to increase the opportunity we have to move 27:47 and just moving, just being active can be a most important 27:52 thing in helping you to get the benefits of exercise. |
Revised 2015-08-19