Exercise: This is a pubic service announcement
Wise Readers,
Swimsuits—they’re not what we’re discussing today. Nor are we broaching penis size, much as I enjoy saying ‘penis size’ and even though it’s the topic men ask me about the most.
Instead, we’re discussing something vital to swimsuits and penises everywhere. Because while no woman has ever complained to me about partners’ puny penile dimensions—not once in 3 years here and 14 as a relationship consultant—I’ve heard plenty about ED, aka erectile disorder, a man’s inability to get and sustain an erection. Size may not be a big deal to women, but a penis that’s limping along is.
(And for those men who remain convinced that a big ‘un is paramount, despite contrary evidence, keep this in mind: No matter how big it is, if it won’t rise to the occasion, that wood’s no good.)
Other LoveScience articles have dealt with ED solutions, but not prevention; nobody is asking about what really spells trouble down the Happy Trail: sedentary lives that contribute to obesity. It’s a growing problem~so to speak. According to the CDC, in 2000 no American state had more than 30% obese adults; by 2010, 12 states did. Today, 35.7% of USA adults have a body mass index over 30, and zero states meet CDC goals for 15% or fewer obese adults. Global data back the trend. You, Wise Readers, are well-read, well-informed types, so you probably know the dire health outcomes of obesity. You may know that the generation born in 2000 is the first where 1 in 3 will develop diabetes, and consequently the first generation with a lower life expectancy than their parents. And you surely know that how much we eat and how little we move are prime contributors.
But did you know abdominal body fat in particular is a weenie-dangler, a libido-buster, and a performance problem? So much so that public service announcements should warn about obesity’s sexual side effects right along with diabetes, heart disease, and cancer: “Couch potatoes, prepare for limp tubers.”
Hard Facts for men:
*Abdominal fat hampers horniness by lowering testosterone.
*Erections rely on getting and keeping blood in the penis; that requires capillaries unclogged by fats. Belly fat can indicate a lot of clogging—hence the heightened ED risks. In one study headed by a researcher with the ironic surname of Bacon, who followed outcomes of 22,000+ healthy men over a 14-year timespan, the obese were *90%* likelier to develop ED than the non-obese—but the men who exercised most were 30% less likely to get ED.
*It’s hard to feel sexy if you feel embarrassed by your looks. Studies show that some men have such an awful body image, they try to avoid being seen naked during sex. This worries obese men most, perhaps due to their perception that their penis is small, since abdominal fat can obscure much of the male member. Do you think that’s what men have in mind when they offer to hide the salami? Do you think a guy who’s that insecure about his appearance is going to make a great lay? Me neither.
Lest women feel left out of the conversation, abdominal fat—or as I call mine, ‘abominable fat’—also fails to do us any favors, either in attracting a partner, or fully experiencing our sexuality. Men routinely pursue fit women and assume that better-looking (read: hourglass-shaped) women are better in bed—and it may be true. Obese women commonly suffer lackluster libidos and higher levels of sexual disorders and dissatisfaction compared to healthy-weight women who aren’t smoking or drinking to excess.
The Cure:
There is a treatment that will reduce your waistline, without pills or surgery. Women, it will keep you looking taller, thinner and younger for longer. And as fat recedes, guys, your penis will look bigger. In both sexes, this treatment heightens libido, reduces sexual disorders, and increases orgasmic intensity. And it does it all free of charge—without pills or surgery.
The treatment? Exercise.
The amount? 150 minutes a week.
The intensity? Moderate.
The right exercise? The one you’ll do.
Experiments—not just correlations—show that exercise causes all of the above outcomes. The returns are greatest for about 30 minutes’ exercise daily. You don’t even have to do your half-hour all at once; breaking it up into 10-minute sessions three times a day yields about the same benefits. And although your exercise can be intense, it doesn’t have to be. Walking briskly is just fine.
Indeed, most of the research has focused on walking. I love walking because you can do it for a lifetime without ruining your joints, all it costs is time and some good shoes, it can be done socially or alone, and it’s available when and where you are. But if walking bores you, or you don’t have a safe place to walk, a disability prevents it, or you’ll only exercise if it’s scheduled, do what suits you.
Of course, the sexual benefits of movement are just the tip of the exer-berg. Over the past 18 years of professing, I’ve kept a list of the benefits of exercise that crop up in texts and studies I teach from or encounter in personal reading, and that list appears beneath my signature today. I hope you find it as motivating and eye-opening as my students and I do.
The Question:
In the meantime, I’ve got a question for you:
If there were a safe, free treatment that would increase your libido, intensify your orgasms, enhance your (or your sweetie’s) erections, make your (or your sweetie’s) penis look bigger, heighten your sexual self-confidence, keep you looking younger for longer, plus banish depression and anxiety, stave off Alzheimer’s, aid attention and memory into late life, increase energy, enhance sleep, protect against almost every major disease, lessen your number of sick days, hasten recovery if you did get ill or have surgery, lengthen both the quantity and quality of your life, save you big bucks in healthcare costs, and get and keep you swimsuit-ready…would you take it?
Or put Dr. Mike Evans’ way, “Can you limit your sitting and sleeping to just twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day?”
Make a splash, in bed and at the beach. Exercise.
Cheers,
Duana
This article is dedicated to daily walks: My heart’s mitral valve had been in decline for at least 20 years, undetected, but a lifetime of walking allowed my heart to compensate for so long that effective surgery was available by the time my body couldn’t take care of the issue on its own anymore. I thus also dedicate this article to two men. The first was a coach, my father, Larry Welch, who lives his value of exercise every day and taught me to do the same from childhood. The second was my cardiothoracic surgeon, Stephen Dewan, whose expert hands completely healed my heart one year ago this month.
Thanks to them, I’m still walking.
BENEFITS OF EXERCISE:
—The best time to start living healthfully is From The Beginning. The second-best time, though, is Right Now, and Right Now is possible for most of us at any age. Weight training and exercise build strength into the 90s, and –surprise!—a 19-year-old and a 90-year-old gain strength at the same rate.
Sexual benefits:
— The sexual benefits, most of which are also listed in the above article, include heightened sex drive, more (any?) orgasms, more intense orgasms, better self-confidence, and fewer sexual disorders for women and men alike.
—Men specifically have lower risks of ED and the appearance of a larger penis as they exercise and lose weight. Or as Robert Crooks and Karla Baur put it, “A healthy diet and exercise that result in a normal weight form the foundation of sex drive and functioning (‘Our Sexuality’, 11th edition, p. 410).”
—Research shows that men commonly assume better-looking women are better in bed, and men use body shape and youthfulness—both enhanced by exercise—as a large component of ‘better-looking’. It’s possible that these women really are better in bed, since women’s sex drive, responsiveness, and self-confidence all increase with exercise.
—Exercise helps maintain a youthful height, too, because weight-bearing exercise reduces bone loss and hence osteoporosis; it also maintains balance, which allows us all to appear younger and avoid injury. Anyone wishing to attract a man or avoid pain of brittle and breaking bones is wise to consider this a major advantage.
Weight loss:
—About half of American men and 2/3 of women want to lose weight. Between 60-65% of adults in the USA are overweight, and around the world today, 65% of people live in countries where overweight kills more people than being underweight.
—Losing weight is tough, and the way most of us attempt it is ineffective and can even make us gain more weight back than we lost. Experiments since the late 1960’s have shown that crash diets not only result in a small (6%) weight loss, but that metabolism drops to a mere 15% of what it had been, pre-crash. The body’s evolutionary investment in keeping alive through a famine is intense, and the body doesn’t get it that this ‘famine’ is self-induced for its own good. Not only that, but when we gain, our body increases the number of fat cells, and those fat cells don’t go away after we lose weight; they hang around awaiting stray calories. Upshot? Once people resume normal eating, the vast majority not only gain all the weight back—they gain back more than they lost.
—Yet if you live by this paragraph, you’ll never need to resort to another diet again. Research shows that the people who keep weight off have some interesting things in common. They set modest, realistic goals for slow loss; no “Biggest Losers”, thanks. They change their lifestyle; no diets, these are permanent changes. If a specific change they’re considering seems impossible to do long-term, they don’t make that particular change. They avoid hunger—since hunger triggers the body to hang onto calories and drop metabolism; likewise, they eat throughout the day and avoid eating one large meal. They eat healthfully, and they don’t cut out entire groups of foods in a scorched-earth kind of mentality; for instance, they still eat fat (your brain needs it!), but the fats they choose come from healthy sources such as fish, avocadoes, nuts, olive oil, and canola oil. They minimize temptation in ways that make sense for them—ways ranging from eating out rarely to having half their meal brought to the restaurant table and the other half packed away, to shopping only on a full stomach, to dining off smaller plates at home; they watch less than two hours of TV per day; they return to their lifestyle after a lapse; and…they exercise.
—Exercise is a key component of keeping weight off, not just of losing weight. It reduces fat cells, speeds metabolism, lowers set-point, and by building muscle, it burns calories even when you’re sitting still.
Over-all physical benefits:
—Exercise extends the quality and quantity of life. Most exercisers live at least two years longer than non-exercisers, and they typically do so while feeling better, living independently for longer, and paying less in healthcare costs. In one study, for instance, the risk of death dropped by 23% during a 12-year span among Harvard alums who were randomly assigned to exercise. In another study of Finnish twins by Kujala and others, those who occasionally exercised had a 29% lower death rate over 20 years than those who did no exercise. And with daily exercise, death risk declined 43%.
—Exercise lessens the total number of days a person spends sick from almost all conditions, including almost all chronic conditions.
—Exercise releases endorphins—lessening pain perception, increasing the pain threshold, and reducing pain-related disability. In one study, one hour of exercise 3x/week reduced knee arthritis pain and disability by 47%.
—Exercise lowers blood pressure, staving off a major cause of death—hypertension. In one Japanese study, every 10 minutes of increased time spent walking to work reduced blood pressure by 29% in people who had a 21-or-more-minute walk to the office; every 10 minutes of increased time spent walking to work was associated with a 12% decline in the odds of developing high blood pressure.
—Exercise can reverse and prevent type 2 diabetes. In people at high risk for diabetes (type 2), exercise reduced progression to diabetes by 58%. It’s currently predicted that 1 in 3 children born in the USA in the year 2000 will develop type 2 diabetes at some point, lessening both quality and duration of life while skyrocketing healthcare costs. Exercise can prevent that.
—Exercise can maintain appearance and aspects of youthfulness, such as upright posture in women, by maximizing bone density and preventing osteoporosis (if the exercise is weight-bearing). In one study, exercise reduced hip fracture risk by 41% in postmenopausal women who had 4 hours a week of exercise.
—Exercise reduces blood pressure rises due to stress.
—It strengthens the heart muscle.
—It enhances blood flow and keeps the vessels open all over the body (see ‘Sexual benefits’ and the article above).
—Exercisers have half the rate of heart attacks of non-exercisers.
—Muscles of exercisers consume the fats that would otherwise clog arteries.
—Exercise maintains and enhances balance. In two experiments, Wolf et al. and Wolfson et al. randomly assigned some older adults to learn and use tai chi, and others served as controls. Not only did those who were tai-chi trained (for about 3 mo.) improve balance, but their blood pressure and fear of falling reduced as well. Cavanaugh and Blanchard-Fields reported that “performance matched levels analogous to those of people 3 to 10 years younger. These significant gains lasted as long as 6 months after intensive training ended.” (in Adult Development & Aging, 4th ed., p. 47).
—Exercise reduces the decline in aerobic capacity that normally accrues with age. “By age 65, the average adult has experienced a 60-70% decline in the aerobic capacity since young adulthood. However, if you stay in good shape throughout adulthood, the decline is much less, perhaps as little as 20-25% (Trappe et al., 1996, reported in Cavanaugh and Blanchard-Fields’ 4th ed. of Adult Development & Aging, p. 49).”
—Exercise is the “#1 treatment of fatigue,” according to Dr. Mike Evans’ online review of copious research.
—Exercise prevents or mitigates almost every chronic disease risk, but being out of shape is itself the largest risk for death. Mike Evans reports that in a large-scale longitudinal study of death risks done by Blair, low fitness (Cardio Respiratory Fitness, or CRF) was more dangerous than any other factor—including (in order of risk) hypertension, smoking, obesity, diabetes, and high cholesterol.
—Blair also found that obesity combined with no exercise was deadly, but that if a person who was obese did exercise, that person’s risk of death and disability was greatly reduced~even if the person was still obese.
—Exercise sometimes trumps surgery as a cure and preventative. Reinehr Hambrecht took participants who’d had some level of arterial blockage, and randomly assigned some to do aerobics for 1 hour a week + 20 minutes of daily exercycling, and others to get a stent but otherwise continue their normal (presumably sedentary) lifestyle. Interestingly, the exercise was more effective than the stent—an 88% ‘event-free’ rate one year later, compared to 70% of the stent group. This means exercise was 18% better than a surgical intervention.
Mood:
—There are a lot of stresses we can’t outrun, but exercise can help us cope and Be Happy Anyway~or at least avoid depression and anxiety. Aerobic exercise, which you get with any sustained, brisk physical activity, helps us manage the inescapable stresses of life.
—In one study, exercise reduced anxiety by 48%.
—In another study, even low exercise levels eliminated depression in 30% of people, and the number shot to 47% as exercise increased.
—In another study by McMurray, reported by David G. Myers (‘Psychology’, 8th edition, p. 430), “three in ten American and Canadian people, and two in ten British people who do aerobic exercise at least three times a week also manage stressful events better, exhibit more self-confidence, feel more vigor, and feel depressed and fatigued less often than those who exercise less (McMurray, 2004). In a Gallup survey, nonexercisers were twice as likely as exercisers to report being ‘not too happy’ (Brooks, 2002).”
— Also reported by Myers, Lisa McCann and David Holmes’ experiment found that depression lifted the most for mildly-depressed women who were randomly assigned to exercise rather than to relaxation, although both groups recovered better than those with no intervention at all.
—Vigorous exercise such as running provides a literal high, as any marathoner can tell you. And Thayer found that most folks feel better for at least two hours following just 10 minutes of walking, in terms of energy and tension.
—Exercise raises mood-boosting psychopharmacological substances including endorphins, serotonin (which is what SSRI antidepressants work on), and norephinephrine. Hunsberger and others found that exercise causes mice’s brains to produce new neurons.
—Exercise promotes a sounder sleep, and better sleep boosts mood too.
Cognition:
—Numerous studies find that regular exercise in late life is associated with better cognition, less dementia, and less Alzheimer’s disease. The progression to dementia and Alzheimer’s is lessened by about half in exercisers.
—Attention-switching, or paying varying amounts of attention to more than one task at a time (such as monitoring a conversation while driving, but then being able to shift to paying closer attention to the road if someone steps in front of you), is important—and it’s an ability that declines with age. But exercise can help. In one experiment by Hawkins and others, some older adults were assigned to swim 3x weekly for 10 weeks, or not. Only the swim group’s attention-switching improved over the course of the study. Aerobic fitness is tied to the ability to focus and sustain attention—not just correlationally, but causally.
All material copyrighted by Duana C. Welch, Ph.D., and LoveScience Media, 2012.
If you have a question for Duana, email her at Duana@LoveScienceMedia.com. You’ll receive a confidential, personal response, and your name and other identifiers will be kept secret should your letter ever be used on-site.
Related LoveScience articles:
Penis size and women’s satisfaction: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/when-size-matters-penis-size-and-womens-satisfaction.html
A lot of the other stuff you wanted to know about penis size, and weren’t too scared to ask (includes the science on obese men thinking their penis is small b/c they can’t see it all): http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/qa-from-when-size-matters-penis-size-and-womens-satisfaction.html
Erectile disorder, and how to treat it even if your partner won’t: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/sos-save-our-sexlife-or-do-it-yourself-sex-therapy-when-your.html
More on ED: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/qa-for-save-our-sexlife-diy-sex-therapy-when-your-guy-has-ed.html
Women’s sexual disorders, including low desire: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/what-to-do-when-shes-not-ever-in-the-mood.html
More on what to do if she’s not ever in the mood: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/qa-for-what-to-do-when-shes-not-ever-in-the-mood.html
The author wishes to thank the following scientists and sources:
The Centers For Disease Control, for statistics about the percentage of Americans who are obese by State, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and other factors, and for information on risks of obesity and on how obesity rates have changed across time: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
The World Health Organization, for stats on global issues with weight: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
CG Bacon and others, 2006, for “A prospective study of risk factors for erectile dysfunction,” research on 22,000+ men; the obese were 90% likelier to develop ED than the non-obese, but the exercisers’ risk of ED was 30% less than the norm. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16753404
IB Addis and others, 2006, for “Sexual activity and function in middle-aged and older women”—research showing the sexual disorders, sexual dissatisfaction, and low libido issues faced by obese women.
Mike Evans, for the best video I’ve ever seen for the lay public about exercise and the research that proves its numerous benefits: 23 ½ hours: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUaInS6HIGo
Over the past two decades, as I’ve taught college, I’ve kept a list of exercise benefits as they’ve arisen in textbooks and articles I’ve read for course preparations. I must therefore thank the primary textbook authors who sifted through the exercise research and made that possible:
—John C. Cavanaugh and Fredda Blanchard-Fields, Adult Development & Aging
—David G. Myers, Psychology and Social Psychology
—Robert Crooks and Karla Baur, Our Sexuality
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Reader Comments (15)
Love this entry into your oeuvre! I do have one quibble, which I will share immediately.
Losing weight is not necessary to get healthier through exercise. People who are heavy who exercise regularly are healthier whether or not they lose weight.
This is important to those of us, like moi, who have a lot of trouble losing weight and probably will never be all that thin. Due to regular exercise, I have lost weight over the last several years, and I've kept it off, but I sure as heck ain't thin.
Thing is, I don't *need* to be thin. I get the benefit of awesome sexytimes without having to do more than exercise and add healthier food into what I already eat.
No dieting, either. Instead of limiting foods, I just added in fruits and veggies and whole grains. More nourishment == healthier == way better in lots of areas.
So I don't need to be skinny to feel awesome, which is good because looking around at my gene pool, chances of that happening are not so great.
Outside of that additional info, I have no qualms with Duana's brilliance.
Cite? Did someone ask for a cite? Start here:
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/04/16/evidence-that-fat-people-can-be-as-healthy-as-thin-people/
Hey, Mocha's Mom, you're right (and actually, the point is made, but waaaay down in the list of benefits under my signature). Numerous studies show that if heavy people exercise and don't lose weight, they still lose disease risks, disabilities, pain, and other stuff we'd all like to lose, while gaining super-sexiness, energy, solid sleep, and the other stuff we'd all like to gain.
Exercise does, though, tend to change a woman's (or man's) shape to be far healthier, even if the person remains technically overweight or obese. The exercise tends to reduce the abdominal/abominable fat that really hurts sexual health and all the other matters in and below the article. Fat in other places is not nearly as harmful.
You may wonder how folks can exercise without losing weight. For a few, there's a genuine genetic resistance, and that may explain some of it; but it's important to note that weight has steadily increased in most developed nations since 1980, yet human bioligical evolution typically proceeds at a glacial pace. So most people are going to lose weight and keep it off with exercise.
However, for some, exercise doesn't result in weight loss. Sometimes it just redistributes the weight--and as long as it distributes fat away from our middles, that's the key. Often, pounds are lost in fat but gained in muscle, and muscle weighs more than fat. And I can tell you, as an exerciser who has gained weight across years, that some of us eat more than we burn. One friend of mine who doesn't want to lose any weight but who loves eating, exercises to be able to eat more.
Regardless, even without weight loss, the exercisers are still waaaaay ahead of non-exercisers in terms of health, longevity, happiness, and horniness ;).
BTWay, there's a big difference between not-obese and skinny. One needn't be skinny.
In fact, you reminded me that it's possible to be what my dad (a former coach) used to call a 'skinny fat person'--a person who is thin but unhealthy or at risk of poor health. Being a healthy weight is not enough; exercise is still key for the thin group, too.
Plus, not all thin people get thin in a healthy way. If optimal weight is achieved via non-optimal ways such as smoking, bingeing-then-purging, or starving, then death and disability rates climb.
I teach an entire class session just about the paragraph above on How Weight Losers Keep Weight Off--because keeping weight off is so very rare. For those who want to re-read that paragraph now, here it is:
"...if you live by this paragraph, you’ll never need to resort to another diet again. Research shows that the people who keep weight off have some interesting things in common. They set modest, realistic goals for slow loss; no “Biggest Losers”, thanks. They change their lifestyle; no diets, these are permanent changes. If a specific change they’re considering seems impossible to do long-term, they don’t make that particular change. They avoid hunger—since hunger triggers the body to hang onto calories and drop metabolism; likewise, they eat throughout the day and avoid eating one large meal. They eat healthfully, and they don’t cut out entire groups of foods in a scorched-earth kind of mentality; for instance, they still eat fat (your brain needs it!), but the fats they choose come from healthy sources such as fish, avocadoes, nuts, olive oil, and canola oil. They minimize temptation in ways that make sense for them—ways ranging from eating out rarely to having half their meal brought to the restaurant table and the other half packed away, to shopping only on a full stomach, to dining off smaller plates at home; they watch less than two hours of TV per day; they return to their lifestyle after a lapse; and…they exercise."
In class, we emphasize your points, and then this one:
If you do everything just right, that does not mean everyone winds up with a 24-inch waist, a size Small dress, or the cultural ideal of the moment. It means you will be a healthy you. It means you accept who you are, and move forward embracing that.
Thanks for a great contribution!
Fabulous reminder about fitness! Obesity reduces testosterone - the libido hormone. But exercise increases blood flow to all regions, including improving one's complexion (Y"outh and beauty," I can hear you saying)! Most personal trainers will say that weight loss is 80% diet, and only 20% exercise, so having a good mix of both ensures a healthy inside and outside.
Cheers, Duana, on your new birthday!!
Paula, thank you so much. June 21st will be a very special birthday for my heart, indeed--one year sincesurgery to repair a genetic defect. It only became apparent there was a problem about 6 weeks before the operation, and among the first things I said to Stephen Dewan (my saintly and supreme surgeon) was: "I've exercised almost every day of my life, eaten healthfully, maintained a healthy weight, and yet I need open-heart?! I think I'll get a bumper sticker that says 'Eat Healthy, Exercise, Die Anyway'."
But he reassured me that the exercise had allowed my heart to compensate for a defect that may have been worsening for 20 or even 30 years; that the fitness would enable me to have great survival odds and a greatly shortened recovery period; and that if I had needed the surgery back when the valve first began deteriorating, the surgery would not have been available. It's possible that exercise saved my life. (Well, that and Stephen Dewan, who achieved a 100% repair of the valve--so good, he prevented my need for any ongoing or daily medication.)
And that brings me to your point--or a related point. Why do we exercise? What we think about exercise--our rationale for doing it--is important. Research finds that young adults exercise to improve their appearance, but older adults exercise to enhance their health. Guess who keeps it up?
Yep. The older adults; the folks who are motivated by how they feel, not just how they look.
Weight loss is a reason to exercise, but as long as it's only about appearance, it's usually not enough of a motivator. While diet alone, or exercise alone, is typically insufficient if we want to achieve and sustain significant weight loss, exercise remains vital to every aspect of well-being--sexual, physical, psychological, even, it can be asserted, spiritual--whether or not weight loss is part of the picture.
As of today, my resting heartrate is 54 beats per minute, and my blood pressure is 105/59. In other words, I'm healthier than ever before and feeling phenomenal. It is a tremendous gift. It is a gift that comes from a desire for health and not only appearance.
Youth and beauty do count, evolutionarily, for anyone who wants a man. But we ourselves--how we feel, what we can do, how healthy we are--count even more :).
I'm back -- I just can't resist this subject!
Reducing pain can really improve your sex life, and exercise is perfect for reducing pain from repetitive strain injuries (RSIs), including carpal tunnel syndrome. I am the poster child for that one.
When I read that there was good evidence showing that people who did aerobic exercise, strength training, and plenty of stretching regularly could overcome most of the ill effects of RSIs, I wanted to do that. The only problem was finding a way to plan out a workout program and figure out when to work out regularly.
Every darn day I'd think, "Hey, I could work out today, but I don't really know where I'm going with that and I have no idea if I could keep it going. No point to working out one day and then stopping." So I didn't work out.
At some point, I was thinking about this (and had been reading Albert Ellis) when it occurred to me that the only way to figure out what kind of exercise I could do would be to try some. It also occurred to me that there would never be a time in my life when I had figured out the perfect exercise schedule or would be able to guarantee that I would keep working out long term.
On that logic, I figured that the only time I could guarantee that I would work out was right now, by actually doing it. Since there was no point to not doing it, I grabbed an old Jane Fonda DVD and went for it.
And for the same reason, I did it the next day. And the one after that. But not the one after that -- however, the day after the day after the day after that, I got back to it.
Within a couple of weeks, the pain in my wrists, elbows, shoulders and neck was noticeably reduced. As in the darn thing worked!
I am pretty sure I am a more attractive person standing upright and smiling than I was hunched in pain and cranky from lack of sleep (hard to sleep when every position hurts).
There is also this bizarre fact: in total defiance of basic physics, the more I work out the more energy I have. Using energy doesn't generate energy in most systems, but for the human body it works a treat.
So, people can be more energetic, suffer less pain, and look better by dragging their hinders off the darn couch for a half hour a day. Totally worth it!
And there is no perfect plan or equipment. I'm still using the same old DVDs, some cheap dumbbells I picked up at Target, and an exercise mat that first saw the light of day circa 1986.
My point is I LOVE THIS WEEK'S COLUMN because it is about something that TOTALLY WORKS and that most people can actually USE in REAL LIFE. Heck, my mom is in her late 60s and does a seated workout and a calisthenics class that is done in the swimming pool and she looks about ten years younger than when she started.
So maybe it's a good idea.
Dear Dr. Duana,
I think this is your best column yet, and I've loved them all! At age sixty-seven, I'm feeling better than I can ever remember, and it's all because of eating healthily and exercising (love that bike!). This major change of attitude/habits happened when my husband needed a stent last year, and we knew we had to change our lifestyle. BTW...I was one of those "skinny fat people".
Thanks for sharing all the research that confirms what I knew I felt and also how I looked! And, last but not least, congratulations on your upcoming first anniversary of having the life-saving heart surgery! We're all grateful!
Louise
Duana, hi again! I can attest to exercise increasing libido. The best and most frequent sex my wife and I have ever had has been when she's exercising. I have always exercised so I don't really know the difference but for her...night and day. Now...if I can only figure out a way for her to stay with it... Might help some with that 'other' issue we discussed. Ha!
Dear Mocha's Mom,
I'm delighted that you healed yourself from chronic pain with...exercise. You = awesome. And yes, research indicates most of us could be awesome that same way to reduce or even eliminate many sources of pain. Which is better still.
I love your point that you reduced your pain with exercise rather than meds or surgery; that exercise-as-pain-relief is something that works for most anyone; and that one's sex life does tend to rather improve when one can sleep (hence getting energy for nookie) and frolic painlessly. (Okay, I guess that made several points.)
I love your point that the thing to do is start exercising somehow, some way, and figure out the details as you go--rather than waiting to figure out the perfect regimen and schedule ahead of time. We're all busy. Figuring out the perfect schedule would take more time than just going ahead and moving around some.
I love your point that there's an exercise that will work for just about anyone, including people who need to be seated the whole time, and/or folks who need to avoid weight-bearing stuff. In class, after the students and I generate a list of side-effects of a half-hour's daily exercise, I ask a trick question: "What's the right exercise?" Answer: the one you'll do. That'll depend on many personal factors, including energy, time, money, whether you need others (or would rather die than be seen sweating in public), your current health/mobility, etc. You've found a few exercises that are right for you. Bravo!
I love your point that exercising can be oh-so-cheap. Mine own 2-pound dumbells are also from Target and work just fine.
And I love this most of all:
" I did it the next day. And the one after that. But not the one after that -- however, the day after the day after the day after that, I got back to it." Absolutely. When I get into a rut and don't use weights for several days, weeks, or even months, they're still waiting for me when I'm rut-less. If I get a cold and don't exercise at all for a while, my legs are still there when I'm well again.
Those who get and keep the benefits of exercise see it as something they'll always get back to, even if they take a break. It's only half an hour, but it's still seen as a core part of life and living. Viva! to you and your letter. Guess I should just have said I love it all.
Dear Louise,
Great to hear from you, and thanks for the kind words about my heart and this article.
You're proof that taking up the Movement movement improves life at every age. Research shows that all of us--18 to 80 and beyond--not only can get all the benefits of exercise, but that we add strength at the same rate.
Incidentally, although I left kids out of this article (obviously, since the piece itself was about sexuality and exercise)--it's especially important, now, for us to promote exercise starting in childhood. Kids need at least an hour of exercise every day, although it can be just running around with friends and doesn't have to be a formal 'let's-do-this-workout' activity. When kids gain weight, they're much more likely to have lifelong pain, disease, and disability than if they had remained thin through childhood; about 1 in 5 American toddlers is currently overweight. 1 in 3 of today's kids is going to develop a totally preventable disease--type 2 diabetes--and that's tragic; not only is that kind of diabetes utterly preventable, but it's the reason the CDC projects that the kids born in 2000 and later will have *shorter* lives than their parents. Yikes.
Lest we think the diabetes for these kids is only going to occur after they're adults, think again; kids are a fast-rising group of type 2 diabetics, due to weight gain occurring from poor nutrition, too much screentime (1 hour a day is about as much as kids should have; more than 2 hours is asking for obesity and cognitive trouble, and zero is the research-approved amount for kids age 2 and under), and lack of exercise.
I used to do PR for the American Diabetes Association. A scientist I met in San Antonio found that 25% of the kids in one part of the city tested positive for high blood-sugars that shorten life and lead to blindness, amputations, and kidney failure--ie, type 2 diabetes. Some schools are checking for what looks like dirt on the back of the kids' necks; it's not dirt, it's an outward sign that type 2 diabetic disease processes have already started in our kids. I saw a child with this in the grocery store and asked his parents to have him checked.
I'm all the more passionate about this because my own daughter has the autoimmune, genetic form of the disease (type 1) which is neither preventable nor curable. She lives a very healthy life that would prevent type 2. It's maddening to see a preventable form of the disease becoming legacy and legion for our--all of our--kids.
Louise, kudos to you for changing and enhancing your life with a daily bike ride--and sharing the story here. I don't doubt you're feeling and looking your best-ever.
Good for you--literally :).
Hi, Chuck, thanks so much for writing again! That's very interesting that your wife's libido is so obviously tied to her amount of exercise; the research agrees, but I guess I assumed the effects would be subtler than what you're getting at...veddy, veddy interesting.
And very positive for you and your marriage!
I get a lot of letters from men whose drive is mismatched with their mate's~many ask about ways to make their wives hornier. The question has been answered in a salt-n-pepper manner throughout LoveScience, but it sounds like it's time to answer it in one specific article...
Duana, I think that would make for a very interesting, informative column. Ours has only matched when we were young/first married and for a few years in her late 30's/40ish when she was exercising regularly. That was after three kids...two of them still very young. She looked great and, I think, obivously felt great. Otherwise, we have always been out of sync. Another contributing factor in all of this is stress and the effect exercise has in reducing stress. Stress can have dramatic effects on our physical and emotional state and I think both of these are factors in our case.
For those whose bodies have adapted to your current regimen, and you use dumbells, switch the dumbells out for a kettlebell-type weight. Their shape makes your body work differently, and you will notice the difference just by changing an inexpensive piece of equipment (I use one kettlebell versus two dumbells). Kettlebell-type weights are readily available, so no need to go to specialty store. Now, back to my lunges and squats. :-)
Chuck, time for that article, then. And you're right, stress is evil~or, too much is. (Apparently, with too little, people do nothing.)
Paula, I've never tried those, will have to check them out! Weight-lifting has always been tough for me, since I used to view it as spending time just picking stuff up and then putting it down again, in essence achieving nothing. But the research is on the weightier side, and once I finally started lifting, it was amazing how much better I felt.
And this is why, I think, people who exercise for how they feel stick with it longer than folks doing it for how they look: It takes as little as 10 minutes' walking to feel immediately better, so saith the science. But it takes weeks or months, usually, to get much return on one's appearance.
It's well-known in the research on motivation that most of us are more responsive to immediate gains than gains that are far in the future. When people attune themselves to the immediate benefits--how they feel--they're tapping a powerful source of motivation.
See you at the park :).
Duana, looking forward to reading it when it's complete. When I'm stressed I want more closeness, support, intimacy. When my wife is stressed she wants to be left alone. So...mitigating stress in her life is project numero uno on my 'To Do' list and that will involve some form of exercise...IF I can get her to break away from all those things that contribute to the stress in the first place.
Chuck, it sounds like you know your wife well and understand that distracting her from stress and redirecting her to some physical activity could both mitigate her stress and bring you greater closeness together.
Thanks again for the article idea and for writing in.