Video

Transcript

now of course we all know for a fact

that exercise can improve your

cardiovascular function it can increase

your lifespan

but if that’s true then why are certain

people dropping dead of heart attacks

from

exercise that’s the topic for today is

there an actual danger to exercise and

the answer is

yes and no it really depends on

certain variables

so exercise is a type of movement in

your body that has a unique intensity to

it a duration to it a recovery to it and

a frequency to it and there’s a million

different types of exercises based on

these four variables okay but exercise

can be a positive or a negative stress

depending on these variables right here

and i’m talking about a positive stress

where it causes your body to

adapt to become stronger

versus a negative stress which which

breaks down your body and then you don’t

recover and you have injuries and you

have other problems which i’m going to

give to

so the first thing i want to talk about

and i’m going to put these research

studies down below because i just went

through a deep dive into high intensity

exercise and i found some interesting

things okay i want to share with you

um apparently when you do prolonged

moderate to high intensity exercise

can actually lower your immune system

okay at least temporarily

so apparently moderate to intense

exercise can act as an immunosuppressive

activity okay because it can impair

your t cells because it’s a type of

stress

in one of the studies i found something

quite interesting all it takes to lower

your immune system is one intense

exercise bout

and that lowering of the immune system

can last for days

but this all really depends on

several things which i’m going to get to

primarily your ability to recover

your health reserve

and some other things also when you have

this sustained high level intense

exercise

you actually increase your risk of viral

infections especially in the lungs

another side effect would be an

increased risk of heart attacks in blood

clots i’m talking about

high intensity now i am going to qualify

that with a few things in a bit for

example like this really depends on your

duration

so you have this high intensity how long

do you go and that’s why i always

recommend something called hit

high intensity interval training

with the key of hit being a short

duration so when you do hit exercises

you do in high intensity but they’re not

very long okay so that greatly reduces

these side effects

so what i’m describing is more of a high

intensity that’s prolonged okay high

sustained endurance type exercise

now in certain endurance sports

whether you’re doing cycle or running

there’s an increased risk of irregular

heart rhythms okay

so why is that well apparently when you

exercise this moderate to high intensity

over a period of time

your heart gets stronger it gets bigger

now you might think that’s a good thing

but the problem with the heart is that

it has

a set of pacemakers okay that regulate

the heart rhythm and apparently when the

heart gets too big

it throws off those pacemakers so that’s

what’s behind this heart rhythm

problem

so even though they’re not developing a

like a pathogenic enlarged heart which

is called cardiomegaly it’s kind of a

exercise induced cardiomegaly which

affects the heart rhythm and of course

high intensity exercise increases the

risk of getting injuries

it can increase inflammation

inside

the blood vessels called endothelial

injury why because there’s a lot of

oxygen going through the body and that

oxygen

is oxidative stress

to the inside of the arteries

there’s even something called

exercise-induced arterial endo fibrosis

what does that mean it means that

there’s inflammation inside the arteries

that then turns into fibrosis and it

creates

kind of a narrowing of your arteries and

even a vasospasm and so this is not very

common but it can happen to highly

trained cyclists and endurance

athletes when you’re doing marathons or

you’re doing these long distance

exercise type activities boy does it

create a tremendous amount of stress on

your body you have to have

a lot of recovery even the exercise

program called crossfit i think

that’s great for young people but once

you get to my age it’s not good because

the amount of recovery that they give

you is just so short i mean i like

crossfit if they can just increase the

recovery time

a bit more because it’s an incredible

workout and i almost had a heart attack

when i attempted to do it

actually that was even like five years

ago because i’m 57 but

it’s intense you have to be in shape and

have a really good recovery to do

crossfit

now the other thing

that high intensity exercise will do is

raise

cortisol i’ve talked about this in a

recent video cortisol

paralyzes your immune system it actually

shuts down the immune system okay

but low intensity exercise actually

lowers cortisol this is why if you’re

stressed out long walks is a good thing

so the real important thing to take away

from

this data is that you must adjust the

workout to your individual recovery

level each person has a different

recovery i’ll give you a quick example i

had a lady who came to my office long

ago

and we had an exercise recovery training

uh little section in the office so i had

her do the bike and she raised her pulse

rate to like 158

send her home she comes back the next

day the pulse rate is still 158 okay

there’s basically no recovery and so the

recovery is not a passive thing it’s an

active

thing that’s in your nervous system

that’s like a push down wave even if you

were to run upstairs right now get your

pulse rate high

and then you would stop and then you

would check your pulse rate it should

start coming down what causes it to come

down it’s an active thing it’s actually

the parasympathetic nervous system which

gets activated that’s actually pushing

your

pulse rate down

and in practice i had a machine that

measured the parasympathetic nervous

system which is pretty cool and that

technology is called heart rate

variability which you can actually uh

check both

the parasympathetic system and also the

sympathetic nervous system

so number one you need to adjust the

exercise to your recovery if you could

find someone

or buy a device maybe there’s one for

your cell phone that can measure heart

rate variability you can find out your

recovery and then you’ll have some

objective test if you don’t have

something like that you can actually

check your pulse rate and measure the

recovery time after your exercise is it

coming down towards where you started or

not and that would be after a minute and

i will put a link down below of how to

test that but the whole goal is just to

avoid over training

i have another example i was in practice

this lady came in she wasn’t losing

weight at all and i’m not kidding she

was exercising

six

hours a day

seven days a week i am not kidding and

she’s wondering why she’s not losing

weight

absolutely positively over training i

mean it’s just crazy

another example i had someone else

who

couldn’t lose weight if her life

depended on it she went to the gym

and for a whole year she worked out

every other day and she lost one pound

after a whole year

well i found out her sleeping was crappy

so we fixed her sleeping

and we didn’t even have her exercise we

we changed her diet too and she started

losing weight a lot more than that one

pound so

you know it’s all about the recovery one

really important nutrient to take if you

have low recovery if you’re at risk for

heart problems

is vitamin d because one of the first

vitamin d deficiency symptoms is weak

muscle and i’m not talking about just

your skeletal muscle i’m talking about

the cardiac muscle too so this is very

protective against heart attacks and it

can strengthen your immune system at the

same time

number three omega-3 fatty acids fish

oils sardines cod liver oil all real

good for recovery if you work out and

you want to speed up your recovery

omega-3

can help you and number four increase

the recovery between

your hit workout so if you’re gonna do

this intense exercise for a minute

don’t just recover for 30 seconds

go two or three minutes of recovery

before you start that intense exercise

about again and that also has to do with

the frequency of days of the week that

you work out

if you’re over the age of

45 or 50

like myself you may benefit from having

a couple more days between your workout

so let’s say you work out two days a

week

or three days a week but you at least

give enough time to recover and with

some people depending on the intensity

of that workout

i will just say

just rest for like three or four days

and oh my goodness do they feel better

start losing weight things start coming

back because they’ve been having this

low grade inflammation and just not

giving their body a chance to fully

recover between the exercise bouts now

why do people drop dead of heart attacks

from exercise perfectly young healthy

people

for various reasons if they’re doing

some type of moderate to intense

exercise sustained activity

and

there’s anything else at the same time

that’s affecting their immune system

that can put them over the edge okay

because their immune system is already

predisposing them to have a problem with

the heart

so and i have done videos on this topic

i’m not going to get too far into the

woods with that but anything added

stress to your body while you’re doing

intense exercise

can push you over the edge also a lack

of sleep can increase the risk for

having more problems

higher carbohydrates can put you more at

risk because the high carb diet

increases the sympathetic nervous system

and also prevents sleeping also low

nutrients the main nutrient deficiency

that affects the heart especially angina

or heart attacks is vitamin e

so

the more stress you go through the less

sleep you have

the more vitamin e you’re going to need

especially for the heart and i would

recommend tocatrinals versus the

tocopherol

brands okay now we have age right the

older you are the less intense you

really can handle so this variable alone

can put you at risk for a lot of issues

now there’s always exceptions i had

another patient who came in

80 years old

you know looked pretty young

i did that test on him that recovery

test

and

he had

a recovery of like a 28 year old okay

and i was shocked

and one thing that was interesting is

that

he was walking his dog in the dark and

he tripped in a hole and he fell down

and he knocked himself out and he had

some bleeding in his um his skin and

things and within like a day he just

healed right up amazing right

so this guy

apparently when he was younger

took

the olympics in water polo and he’s been

maintaining

his health ever since with exercise at

least

and he can still at 80 years old hold

his breath for three minutes underneath

the water so again there’s always an

exception to the rule and if you can

keep up your training consistently and

not over train

you know you can actually really create

a bulletproof immune system

altitude

apparently the higher altitude you are

the more risk you are when you exercise

for heart problems like right now where

i’m living it’s worth 3000 feet above

sea level when i have friends or family

that come out to where i live and we’re

walking up hills boy they get out of

breath real easy because they have not

adapted if we have them exercised that

can add another strain so these are just

variables i want to bring your attention

to so that way you can exercise and

avoid a bigger problem now if you want

more information about determining your

recovery i put that video up right here

check it out