Does High Intensity Exercise Backfire on you?

Does High Intensity Exercise Backfire on you?

by | Jun 9, 2024 | Chiropractic

Exercise is one of the most powerful anti-inflammatory interventions. The higher the intensity of the exercise, the more antioxidants your body releases afterward to help quench inflammation.

However, one must pay attention to the intensity and duration for exercise to be inflammatory versus pro-inflammatory. The intensity will impact factors such as hormone growth factors, natural opioids, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and compounds that help regulate inflammation.

But what if you can’t engage in high-intensity exercise? Does this mean you’re forced to miss out on the benefits?

Some people are not able to engage in high-intensity exercise for various reasons. They may have an injury or permanent joint damage that makes intense exercise difficult.

What we more commonly see is the person who can’t recover, has a health setback, or sustains an injury every time they begin an exercise program. Exercise releases free radicals, which boosts antioxidant production, but some people’s systems are too beleaguered to compensate.

 

This state of poor resilience and heavy inflammation stems from factors such as:

•    Unmanaged autoimmune or chronic health conditions

•    Long-standing high blood sugar

•    Hormone imbalances

•    Electrolyte imbalance

•    Adrenal imbalances

•    Weak immunity

•    Obesity

•    Endotoxemia—when harmful bacterial byproducts leak from the gut into the bloodstream.

These factors frequently occur together. While the advice to “eat right and exercise” seems logical, the truth is some people cannot handle the additional load without falling apart.

Isometric exercises can help dampen inflammation

The solution is not to resign yourself to a sedentary lifestyle, which is very inflammatory and devastating to the brain.

Instead, we can look to promising research on myokines, immune signaling compounds released by muscles. Studies show that exercise does not have to be intense to release anti-inflammatory myokines.

Instead, simply doing isometric exercises—holding a muscle contraction—can effectively dampen inflammation.

Studies also show that daily sessions of isometric exercises can even outperform traditional aerobic exercises like running and walking when it comes to lowering blood pressure. The mechanism behind this is thought to involve improved vascular function and decreased arterial stiffness. Additionally, isometric exercises can enhance autonomic nervous system function, contributing to better blood pressure regulation.

Isometric exercises sound easy, but they’re not. However, many can still be performed in sitting or lying positions. As with all exercise, start small and build over time as strength builds.

 

Isometric exercise ideas

Isometric-Chest Expander Exercise

Don’t overthink this. Contract a muscle and hold the contraction for 10–30 seconds, then move to another muscle. As your strength improves, increase the time you hold the contraction. Shoot for at least 10–15 minutes a day total.

If you work at a desk all day, set a timer to go off every 55 minutes and do a few minutes of isometric exercises to help combat “sitting disease.”

Here are some isometric ideas to get you started. Remember, even though this is gentle, don’t overdo it. Start cautiously if your health is compromised so you don’t overwhelm your system.

Hold each exercise for 10–30 seconds when starting out. Increase the duration as you get stronger.

  • Contract larger muscle groups one at a time, such as the biceps, triceps, quadriceps, glutes, and calves.

  • Wall sit: Stand with your back against a wall and slide down into a seated position as if sitting in an invisible chair, keeping your knees at a 90-degree angle.

  • Seated leg raise: Sit in a chair with your back straight. Extend one leg straight and hold it.

  • Palm Press: Sit or stand with your back straight. Press your palms together in front of your chest and push them against each other as hard as you can.

  • Seated Abdominal Squeeze: Sit upright in a chair. Tighten your abdominal muscles as if you were trying to bring your belly button closer to your spine.
  • Glute Bridge Hold: Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Lift your hips to form a straight line from your shoulders to your knees and hold.

  • Isometric Bicep Hold:Hold a light dumbbell or just use your own body weight by placing your hands on a table edge. Bend your elbows to 90 degrees and hold.

  • Chair Squat Hold: Stand in front of a chair with your feet shoulder-width apart. Lower yourself as if you were going to sit down, but stop just before you touch the chair.

  • Seated Calf Raise: Sit in a chair with your feet flat on the floor. Raise your heels off the ground and hold.

  • Hand Grip Squeeze: Use a hand grip strengthener or squeeze a stress ball as hard as you can and hold.
  • Neck Isometrics: Sit or stand with good posture. Place your hand against your forehead and press your head forward into your hand without allowing any movement an hold. Repeat by placing your hand on the back of your head and pressing backward, then on each side of your head

 

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Isometric Exercises-Beginner

Hormones out of whack since your brain injury?

by | Dec 22, 2018 | Health

Although brain injury symptoms may subside enough for you to return to daily life, trauma to the brain can continue to subtly wreak havoc on how your body functions and feels for month and even years later. For instance, many people notice their hormone function isn’t the same after a brain injury.

Your hormonal command center — the hypothalamus and pituitary gland — is in the brain. Although a head injury may occur in an isolated area, the vast networks of communication across the entire brain mean that damage to one area affects the entire brain. And because the brain runs the body, it only makes sense daily operations of the body take a hit too.

Estimates on how many people suffer from hormone disorders caused by brain injury vary, however, one study of 1,000 patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) found almost 30 percent had compromised pituitary function.

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Exercise creates good gut bacteria independent of diet

by | Sep 9, 2018 | Exercise

We’re learning what a vital role good gut bacteria play in immune health, brain health, mood, and, of course, gut health. We also know that the best way to beef up your good gut bacteria is through eating lots of different kinds of vegetables and fruits every day. But researchers have discovered yet another way to promote healthy gut bacteria: Regular exercise.

Our digestive tract is home to trillions of gut bacteria that weigh about three to four pounds all together, and are made up of over a 1,000 different species and 5,000 strains. Our body depends on these gut bacteria to:

  • Metabolize nutrients
  • Protect the intestinal wall
  • Produce vitamin K and short chain fatty acids (SCFA), which are important for immune health
  • Maintain health of the digestive tract
  • Regulate immunity
  • Prevent inflammation
  • Promote good brain health and function

As our understanding of healthy gut bacteria evolves, so does the information on how to cultivate your own “microbiome” while inhibiting overgrowth of “bad” bacteria that are infectious and inflammatory. Initially, fermented foods and probiotics were thought to be the main recourse.

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Canola oil worsens memory, raises Alzheimer’s risk

Canola oil worsens memory, raises Alzheimer’s risk

by | Jul 15, 2018 | Nutrition

We’ve long been pitched canola’s health benefits. After all, Whole Foods uses it in all their prepared foods and many vegetarian and vegan products proudly promote it as a feature ingredient. But when scientists, who had shown the brain benefits of olive oil in mice, decided to run the same studies with canola oil, they uncovered a darker truth: Canola oil worsens memory and promotes amyloid plaques, a hallmark Alzheimer’s symptom.

In the olive oil study, researchers gave mice with Alzheimer’s Disease a diet enriched with extra-virgin olive oil and found that compared to the control group, the mice experienced improvements in memory as well as a reduction in amyloid plaques and phosphorylated tau, which creates the neurofibrillary tangles that degenerate the brain in Alzheimer’s.

They replicated the study with canola oil, one of the cheapest and most widely used oils in the world, to see what effects it might have on the brain.

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Autism rates continue to rise, setting new record highs

Autism rates continue to rise, setting new record highs

by | Apr 8, 2018 | Chiropractic

There was a time many people — who are not yet that old — can remember when autism was relatively uncommon. Today it’s so common special education classes have exploded in numbers many parents have a child on the autism spectrum. Although we’d like to blame increased diagnoses, the fact is overall childhood brain development disorders have been skyrocketing in the last two decades and now stand at a shocking 1 in 14 children. These disorders include autism spectrum disorder, an intellectual disability, or a developmental delay

According to the National Health Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), rates of autism have been rising sharply:

2000: 1 in 150 children

2007: 1 in 91 children

2010: 1 in 68 children

2016: 1 in 36 children

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