A new study confirms that Cardio shrinks your
telomeres. Even a person who does no exercise at all may be better off from a
telomere length standpoint than the folks who run marathons and spend hours on
treadmills. Why is this important to you? Because many of today’s most
widespread conditions and illnesses are associated with shorter telomeres.
Telomeres are the tiny genetic “clocks” that tell your cells how old they are.
Typical Indian Push up exercises which is opposite
of aerobics and other endurance exercises, do not shorten your telomeres.
In one telomere study, people with the longest
telomeres were the least likely to develop cancer. They were more than 10 times
less likely to develop cancer than people with short telomeres.1 And
when I read further into the study, I discovered that people with short
telomeres are twice as likely to die from cancer. Another study shows
that the death rate for heart attacks is almost three times higher for people
whose telomeres get short the fastest.
All these facts completely ignored by mainstream
fitness “experts.”
In one, researchers followed up on the known fact
that long-term, cardio-type exercise damages your muscle cells. They decided to
take it a little further and examine the damaged cells. One of the things they
looked at was the length of the telomeres inside these muscle cells. Athletes
with “exercise fatigue” – the athletes doing the long-duration cardio workouts
– had much shorter than normal telomeres. All these facts - “Athletes with
exercise-associated fatigue have abnormally short muscle DNA telomeres...” are
mentioned in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
And, if that’s not enough, in another more recent study researchers compared
trained athletes to “sedentary individuals.”
They looked at the telomere lengths of trained
athletes doing cardio vs. coach potatoes who did no exercise at all. In fact,
the experienced runners ALL had shorter telomeres than the people doing no
exercise. What’s more, the longer the runners ran, the shorter their telomeres.
Now we know that you have the ability to influence
the length of these tiny genetic clocks. You can have younger-acting cells and
help avoid age-related problems by maintaining your telomere length. The most
powerful way to do this is to do the opposite of what fitness experts
recommend. Instead of hours of low-power exercises like running, brisk walking
and cardio, you can maintain the length of your telomeres with shorter periods
of exertion where you challenge yourself a bit more. What you want to do
instead is give your body a challenge, and do it over shorter periods of time.
For instance, one study done at the University of
California in San Francisco found that vigorous exertion protects you from high
stress by protecting your telomeres. And there are dozens more trials that show
the same thing.
You can do this kind of exertion by keeping the
time brief, and challenging your heart and lungs just a bit more with each set
of exertion, and with each workout. This is called “progressivity,” and it’s
what every modern workout program lacks. Progressivity means you increase the
difficulty (pick up the pace or increase the resistance) just a little bit with
each set, and in each workout after that.
Doing just a little bit more, or changing it up in
some way to give your heart and lungs a different challenge gives you the same
benefit as increasing the time you spend working out. You’ll reprogram your
muscles, heart and lungs to get stronger and more responsive. And you’ll
reverse the wear and tear on your body and maintain your telomeres instead of
breaking them down faster. With that in mind, let me give you one movement you
can do right in your own home, no equipment necessary, which will challenge
your heart, lungs and several large muscle groups.
You can achieve this by doing Indian Dive Push-ups.
1
Position yourself on your hands and
knees. Straighten your legs, raising your knees and hips off the floor. Lower
your head and walk your hands back a little bit, if necessary, so that your
body forms an upside-down V, with your hips forming the point of the V. This is
the starting position.
2
Swing your shoulders slowly down and
forward in an arc, which allows you to lower your hips and flatten your body at
the same time. Your position will approximate the typical "down"
position for push-ups: body straight from head to feet,
arms bent and chest just a few inches off the floor. Don't stop there -- move
your shoulders forward and up, keeping your hips low so that you finish with
your back arched, head and chest up and looking forward.
3
Draw your shoulders straight back to
the starting position, lifting your hips and straightening your arms as you do
so, to finish the repetition in your original piked or upside-down V position.
If someone were watching the entire push up from the side, they'd see your
shoulders follow a roughly elliptical path: First the down-forward-and-up-again
arc, then a straight line back to the hips-highest starting position.
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| Push Up Method |
A true dive push-up means you repeat
the above steps in reverse order also until you’re back to your original
starting position, staying as fluid and smooth as possible.
|
|
If you’ve never done a dive push ups
before, start with just a few. This movement is designed so that you can be
progressive without going faster to increase the challenge.
And remember, working out should be
fun. You don’t have to do a regimented number of movements, and you don’t have
to strictly time yourself. You can change it up. Just keep it progressive.
Vanity
adviser:
Dr Minoo
Singh
