Want the health benefits of strength training but not keen on the gym? Try ‘exercise snacking’

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The science is clear: resistance training is crucial to ageing well. Lifting weights (or doing bodyweight exercises like lunges, squats or push-ups) can help you live independently for longer, make your bones stronger, reduce your risk of diseases such as diabetes, and may even improve your sleep and mental health.

But not everyone loves the gym. Perhaps you feel you’re not a “gym person” and never will be, or you’re too old to start. Being a gym-goer can be expensive and time-consuming, and some people report feeling unwelcome or awkward at the gym.

The good news is you don’t need the gym, or lots of free time, to get the health benefits resistance training can offer.

You can try “exercise snacking” instead.

Pressmaster/Shutterstock

What is exercise snacking?

Exercise snacking involves doing multiple shorter bouts (as little as 20 seconds) of exercise throughout the day – often with minimal or no equipment. It’s OK to have several hours of rest between.

You could do simple bodyweight exercises such as:

  • chair sit-to-stand (squats)
  • lunges
  • box step-ups
  • calf raises
  • push-ups.

Exercise snacking like this can help improve muscle mass, strength and physical function.

It’s OK to hold onto a nearby object for balance, if you need. And doing these exercises regularly will also improve your balance. That, in turn, reduces your risk of falls and fractures.

OK I have done all those, now what?

Great! You can also try using resistance bands or dumbbells to do the previously mentioned five exercises as well as some of the following exercises:

When using resistance bands, make sure you hold them tightly and that they’re securely attached to an immovable object.

Exercise snacking works well when you pair it with an activity you do often throughout the day. Perhaps you could:

  • do a few extra squats every time you get up from a bed or chair
  • do some lunges during a TV ad break
  • chuck in a few half squats while you’re waiting for your kettle to boil
  • do a couple of elevated push-ups (where you support your body with your hands on a chair or a bench while doing the push-up) before tucking into lunch
  • sneak in a couple of calf raises while you’re brushing your teeth.
A man does weighted lunges in his lounge room.
Exercise snacking involves doing multiple shorter bouts (as little as 20 seconds) of exercise throughout the day. Cavan-Images/Shutterstock

What does the evidence say about exercise snacking?

One study had older adults without a history of resistance training do exercise snacks at home twice per day for four weeks.

Each session involved five simple bodyweight exercises (chair sit-to-stand, seated knee extension, standing knee bends, marching on the spot, and standing calf raises). The participants did each exercise continuously for one minute, with a one-minute break between exercises.

These short and simple exercise sessions, which lasted just nine minutes, were enough to improve a person’s ability to stand up from a chair by 31% after four weeks (compared to a control group who didn’t exercise). Leg power and thigh muscle size improved, too.

Research involving one of us (Jackson Fyfe) has also shown older adults found “exercise snacking” feasible and enjoyable when done at home either once, twice, or three times per day for four weeks.

Exercise snacking may be a more sustainable approach to improve muscle health in those who don’t want to – or can’t – lift heavier weights in a gym.

A little can yield a lot

We know from other research that the more you exercise, the more likely it is you will keep exercising in future.

Very brief resistance training, albeit with heavier weights, may be more enjoyable than traditional approaches where people aim to do many, many sets.

We also know brief-and-frequent exercise sessions can break up periods of sedentary behaviour (which usually means sitting too much). Too much sitting increases your risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes, whereas exercise snacking can help keep your blood sugar levels steady.

Of course, longer-term studies are needed. But the evidence we do have suggests exercise snacking really helps.

An older Asian man lifts weights at home.
Just a few short exercise sessions can do you a world of good. eggeegg/Shutterstock

Why does any of this matter?

As you age, you lose strength and mass in the muscles you use to walk, or stand up. Everyday tasks can become a struggle.

All this contributes to disability, hospitalisation, chronic disease, and reliance on community and residential aged care support.

By preserving your muscle mass and strength, you can:

  • reduce joint pain
  • get on with activities you enjoy
  • live independently in your own home
  • delay or even eliminate the need for expensive health care or residential aged care.

What if I walk a lot – is that enough?

Walking may maintain some level of lower body muscle mass, but it won’t preserve your upper body muscles.

If you find it difficult to get out of a chair, or can only walk short distances without getting out of breath, resistance training is the best way to regain some of the independence and function you’ve lost.

It’s even more important for women, as muscle mass and strength are typically lower in older women than men. And if you’ve been diagnosed with osteoporosis, which is more common in older women than men, resistance exercise snacking at home can improve your balance, strength, and bone mineral density. All of this reduces the risk of falls and fractures.

You don’t need heavy weights or fancy equipment to benefit from resistance training.

So, will you start exercise snacking today?

Justin Keogh, Associate Dean of Research, Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine, Bond University and Jackson Fyfe, Senior Lecturer, Strength and Conditioning Sciences, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • The Body: A Guide for Occupants – by Bill Bryson

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Better known for his writings on geography and history, here Bryson puts his mind to anatomy and physiology. How well does he do?

    Very well, actually—thanks no doubt to the oversight of the veritable flock of consulting scientists mentioned in the acknowledgements. To this reviewer’s knowledge, no mistakes made it through into publication.

    That said, Bryson’s love of history does shine through, and in this case, the book is as much a telling of medical history, as it is of the human body. That’s a feature not a bug, though, as not only is it fascinating in and of itself, but also, it’d be difficult to fully understand where we’re at in science, without understanding how we got here.

    The style of the book is easy-reading narrative prose, but packed with lots of quirky facts, captivating anecdotes, and thought-provoking statistics. For example:

    • The least effective way to spread germs is kissing. It proved ineffective among volunteers (in what sounds like a fun study) who had been successfully infected with the cold virus. Sneezes and coughs weren’t much better. The only really reliable way to transfer cold germs was physically by touch.
    • The United States has 4% of the world’s population but consumes 80% of its opiates.
    • Allowing a fever to run its course (within limits) could be the wisest thing. An increase of only a degree or so in body temperature slows the replication rate of viruses by a factor of 200.

    Still, these kinds of things are woven together so well, that it doesn’t feel at all like reading a trivia list!

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  • The Sardinian Cholesterol Paradox

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    Broadly speaking, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad” cholesterol, is generally considered to be… Well… Bad. Specifically because of how it can functionally narrow arteries, causing bits of floating detritus to get stuck in it, narrow it further, and eventually harden into atherosclerotic plaque, at which point it becomes even harder for the body to clear out.

    We wrote about the process here: Demystifying Cholesterol

    When it comes to cholesterol, the most common lay understanding (especially under a certain age) is “it’s bad”.

    A more informed view (and more common after a certain age) is “LDL cholesterol is bad; HDL cholesterol is good”.

    A more nuanced view is “LDL cholesterol is established as significantly associated with (and almost certainly a causal factor of) atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and related mortality in men; in women it is less strongly associated and may or may not be a causal factor”

    We wrote more about that, here: Statins: His & Hers? ← despite most research being on men, statins have very different effects (and side effects) for women, often being relatively less useful, and more dangerous. There are exceptions (for some women’s specific profiles they can still be worthwhile), but the trend is certainly troubling.

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    Sardinia is well-known for being one of the “Supercentenarian Blue Zones”, a place whose inhabitants enjoy (on average, statistically) unusually healthy longevity. These places have been looked to for clues as to how to live the healthiest life.

    For example: From Blue To Green: News From The Centenarian Blue Zones

    However, researchers recently were investigating life in a region of Sardinia where a lot of people are aged 90+, and followed the health of 168 of them for up to 6 years (because in the case of those who died during that time, obviously the time was less than 6 years).

    Note: because this was specifically a Blue Zones study, they only included participants of whom all four grandparents were born within the Blue Zone—so not, for example, looking at the health of someone who just moved there from New York, say.

    They collected a lot of interesting data (of course), but what we’re talking about today is that they found that participants with LDL levels above 130 mg/dL had a significantly longer average survival than those with LDL levels below this threshold. Specifically, a 40% lower mortality risk.

    This is interesting, because LDL levels ≥130 mg/dL are considered moderate hypercholesterolemia (i.e., the LDL levels are a bit too high).

    However, if the same participants had total cholesterol levels over 250mg/dL, they got no extra survival benefits, and very high cholesterol was still linked with shorter survival.

    You can read the paper here: The Cholesterol Paradox in Long-Livers from a Sardinia Longevity Hot Spot (Blue Zone)

    But before you reach for the butter…

    The researchers have several hypotheses about why these results could be so, including:

    • The longevity has less to do with LDL itself, and more to do with the diet, with the ratio of grain to olive oil.
    • Most of the participants with higher LDL cholesterol were on antihypertensive drugs, which a) will obviously have a cardioprotective effect, and b) means that their heart health is probably enjoying greater scrutiny, and medical scrutiny can also have a protective effect (indeed, that’s the point of it).
    • It was also speculated that the locals of that region may have a genetic defense against the harm of moderate hypercholesterolemia, due to historical exposure to malaria meaning that naturally slightly higher cholesterol levels without increased cardiovascular risk may have been naturally selected-for (i.e. those without it were more likely to die of malaria and not pass on their genes).

    Thus, it may be that it’s not so applicable more generally. However, it is still reason to at least re-examine how bad LDL cholesterol actually is, and whether for some demographics it could have a protective factor (much like “overweight” BMI is a protective factor for people over 65).

    Still, if you’d like to keep on top of your cholesterol levels, check out:

    How To Lower Cholesterol Naturally, Without Statins

    Enjoy!

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  • Just Be Well – by Dr. Thomas Sult

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    Firstly, what this is not: a “think yourself well” book. It’s not about just deciding to be well.

    Rather, it’s about ensuring the foundations of wellness, from which the rest of good health can spring, and notably, an absence of chronic illness. In essence: enjoying chronic good health.

    The prescription here is functional medicine, which stands on the shoulders of lifestyle medicine. This latter is thus briefly covered and the basics presented, but most of the book is about identifying the root causes of disease and eliminating them one by one, by taking into account the functions of the body’s processes, both in terms of pathogenesis (and thus, seeking to undermine that) and in terms of correct functioning (i.e., good health).

    While the main focus of the book is on health rather than disease, he does cover a number of very common chronic illnesses, and how even in those cases where they cannot yet be outright cured, there’s a lot more that can be done for them than “take two of these and call your insurance company in the morning”, when the goal is less about management of symptoms (though that is also covered) and more about undercutting causes, and ensuring that even if one thing goes wrong, it doesn’t bring the entire rest of the system down with it (something that often happens without functional medicine).

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  • Kidney Beans vs White Beans – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing kidney beans to white beans, we picked the white.

    Why?

    It was close, and each has its strengths! Bear in mind, these are very closely-related beans. But as we say, there are distinguishing factors…

    In terms of macros, kidney beans have very slightly more fiber and white beans have very slightly more protein. But both are close enough in both of those things to call this a tie in this category.

    When it comes to vitamins, there are two ways of looking at this:

    1. kidney beans have more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, B9, C, and K, while white beans have more vitamin B5, E, and choline
    2. kidney beans have slightly more of some vitamins that don’t usually see a deficiency, while white beans have 31x more vitamin E

    Nevertheless, we’re sticking by our usual method of noting that this is a 7:3 win for kidney beans in this category; we just wanted to note that in practical health terms, an argument can be made for white beans on the vitamin front too.

    In the category of minerals, kidney beans have slightly more phosphorus, while white beans have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, potassium, selenium, and zinc. An easy win for white beans this time.

    (In case you’re wondering about the margin on phosphorus, it was 0.2x more, so we’re not seeing a situation like white beans’ 31x more vitamin E)

    In short: both are great and both have their strengths. Enjoy both, together if you like! But if we have to pick one, we’re going with white beans.

    Want to learn more?

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    Take care!

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  • The Web That Has No Weaver – by Ted Kaptchuk

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    At 10almonds we have a strong “stick with the science” policy, and that means peer-reviewed studies and (where such exists) scientific consensus.

    However, in the spirit of open-minded skepticism (i.e., acknowledging what we don’t necessarily know), it can be worth looking at alternatives to popular Western medicine. Indeed, many things have made their way from Traditional Chinese Medicine (or Ayurveda, or other systems) into Western medicine in any case.

    “The Web That Has No Weaver” sounds like quite a mystical title, but the content is presented in the cold light of day, with constant “in Western terms, this works by…” notes.

    The author walks a fine line of on the one hand, looking at where TCM and Western medicine may start and end up at the same place, by a different route; and on the other hand, noting that (in a very Daoist fashion), the route is where TCM places more of the focus, in contrast to Western medicine’s focus on the start and end.

    He makes the case for TCM being more holistic, and it is, though Western medicine has been catching up in this regard since this book’s publication more than 20 years ago.

    The style of the writing is very easy to follow, and is not esoteric in either mysticism or scientific jargon. There are diagrams and other illustrations, for ease of comprehension, and chapter endnotes make sure we didn’t miss important things.

    Bottom line: if you’re curious about Traditional Chinese Medicine, this book is the US’s most popular introduction to such, and as such, is quite a seminal text.

    Click here to check out The Web That Has No Weaver, and enjoy learning about something new!

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  • A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?

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    A Cold Shower A Day Keeps The Doctor Away?

    This is Dutch extreme athlete Wim Hof, also known as “The Iceman”! He’s broken many world records mostly relating to the enduring the cold, for example:

    • climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts
    • running a half-marathon above the Arctic Circle barefoot
    • standing in a container completely covered with ice cubes for more than 112 minutes

    You might not want to do yoga in your pyjamas on an iceberg, but you might like…

    • better circulatory health
    • reduced risk of stroke
    • a boosted immune system
    • healthier skin
    • more energy and alertness

    …and things like that. Wim Hof’s method is not just about extreme athletic achievements; most of what he does, the stuff that can benefit the rest of us, is much more prosaic.

    The Wim Hof Method

    For Wim Hof, three things are key:

    Today, we’re going to be focusing on the last one there.

    What are the benefits of Cold Therapy?

    Once upon a time, we didn’t have central heating, electric blankets, thermal underwear, and hot showers. In fact, once upon a time, we didn’t have houses or clothes. We used to be a lot more used to the elements! And while it’s all well and good to enjoy modern comforts, it has left our bodies lacking practice.

    Practice at what? Most notably: vasodilation and vasoconstriction, in response to temperature changes. Either:

    • vasodilation, because part of our body needs more blood to keep it warm and nourished, or
    • vasoconstriction, because part of our body needs less blood running through it to get cooled down.

    Switching between the two gives the blood vessels practice at doing it, and improves vascular muscle tone. If your body doesn’t get that practice, your blood vessels will be sluggish at making the change. This can cause circulation problems, which in turn have a big impact in many other areas of health, including:

    • cardiovascular disease
    • stroke risk
    • mood instability
    • nerve damage in extremities

    On the flipside, if the blood vessels do get regular practice at dilating and constricting, you might enjoy lower risk of those things, and instead:

    • improved immune response
    • healthier skin
    • better quality sleep
    • more energy and alertness
    • improved sexual performance/responsiveness

    So, how to get that, without getting extreme?

    As today’s title suggests, “a cold shower a day” is a great practice.

    You don’t have to jump straight in, especially if you think your circulation and vascular responses might be a bit sluggish in the first instance. In fact, Wim Hof recommends:

    • Week 1: Thirty seconds of cold water at the end of a warm shower each morning
    • Week 2: One minute of cold water at the end of a warm shower each morning
    • Week 3: A minute and a half of cold water at the end of a warm shower each morning
    • Week 4: Two minutes of cold water at the end of a warm shower each morning

    How cold is cold?

    The benefits of cold exposure begin at around 16ºC / 60ºF, so in most places, water from the cold water mains is sufficiently cold.

    As your body becomes more used to making the quick-change on a vascular level, the cold water will seem less shocking to your system. In other words, on day 30 it won’t hit you like it did on day one.

    At that point, you can either continue with your two-minutes daily cold shower, and reap the benefits, or if you’re curious to push it further, that’s where ice baths come in!

    Can anyone do it, or are any conditions contraindicated?

    As ever, we’re a health and productivity newsletter, not doctors, let alone your doctors. Nothing here is medical advice. However, Wim Hof himself says:

    ❝Listen to your body, and never force the practices. We advise against doing Wim Hof Method if you are dealing with any of the following:

    • Epilepsy
    • High blood pressure
    • Coronary heart disease
    • A history of serious healthy issues like heart failure or stroke
    • Pregnancy*
    • Childhood*❞

    *There is simply not enough science regarding the effects of cold exposure on people who are pregnant, or children. Obviously, we don’t expect this to be remedied anytime soon, because the study insitutions’ ethics boards would (rightly!) hold up the study.

    As for the other conditions, and just generally if unsure, consult a doctor.

    As you can see, this does mean that a limitation of Cold Therapy is that it appears to be far better as a preventative, since it helps guard against the very conditions that could otherwise become contraindications.

    We haven’t peppered today’s main feature with study papers, partly because Wim Hof’s own website has kindly collated a collection of them (with links and summaries!) onto one page:

    Further reading: The Science Behind The Wim Hof Method

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