Avoid Diabetes, Heart Disease, Chronic Illness With Exercise

You can avoid diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses just by doing simple exercises several times a week. And the best part of it, is that you don’t have to do anything crazy like marathon running, biking long distances, or swimming 50 laps a day at your neighborhood Y. All you have to do is lift some weights. And, don’t worry, the weights don’t have to be heavy — even just lifting light 5 pound weights will get the job done.

Indeed, recent research recent research shows that lifting weights also offers several proven health benefits, such as lowering your risk for Type-2 diabetes, elevating your mood and strengthening your heart.

If you’re brand-new to weight training, you can find simple moves on the National Institute on Aging website.

Here are several specific benefits.

Avoid Diabetes:  Boosts Your Mood

Weight training protects against depression and anxiety, a new study shows.

Researchers evaluated 1,100 women ages 45 to 69. Those with low levels of body strength showed clear symptoms for both disorders.

A Harvard analysis of 1,800 people, found that those with mild to moderate depression who lifted iron weights twice a week, saw significant reductions in their symptoms. Researchers believe it’s because the exercise increases blood flow to the brain and releases mood-enhancing brain hormones. This speeds up your metabolism

Weight training builds muscle mass, which enhances insulin sensitivity. There are two places where your body stores carbohydrates — your muscles and your liver. If you don’t have much muscle mass, those carbohydrates  spill into your bloodstream. This raises blood glucose levels, and is stored by your body as fat.  Where does this fat end up? Most of the time, it ends up in your central abdomen, probably the worst location. This fat sits right on your vital organs with potential to secrete toxins.

With muscle mass, however, these carbohydrates go into your muscles and burn off — through either aerobic or resistance training exercises. Indeed, a Japanese study found that when older people in their 60’s did low-intensity resistance training twice a week for 16 weeks, they showed significant improvements in their blood glucose levels.

Prevents Heart Disease

Strength training can be more protective of your heart compared to aerobic exercise. A study published last year, in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, revealed that less than an hour of weekly resistance exercise reduces risk of developing metabolic syndrome (a cluster of conditions, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and elevated blood sugar, that raise risk of heart disease) by up to 70 percent.