EXERCISE AND LUNG DISEASE

Lung disease The secret of longevity is to keep breathing. Sophie Tucker Lung disease encompasses a large collection of widely varying chest pathologies. The most frequent include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD – what used to be referred to as chronic...

MEASURING PHYSICAL FITNESS

I will start with how the professionals do it – in my next blog I will be telling you how to measure your own fitness level for yourself. Let me repeat that the best measure of physical fitness or cardio-respiratory fitness or aerobic capacity is the maximal oxygen...

WHAT IS PHYSICAL FITNESS?

There are all sorts of aspects of physical fitness - muscle strength, balance, flexibility to mention a few. The aspect which interests me and is the subject of my blogs is aerobic fitness otherwise known as cardio-respiratory fitness (CRF). It is the measure...

EXERCISE INTENSITY

To derive health benefits the national guidelines recommend using exercise to burn about 1,000 Calories per week. For weight loss and even greater health benefits an expenditure of 2,000 Calories per week is suggested. This is equivalent to about 1600 MET minutes per...

MEASURING EXERCISE DOSE

Why measure exercise dose? You might wonder why it is helpful to regard exercise as a “dose” let alone measure it. Two reasons pop into my mind: Because of its widespread health benefits, exercise can be equated to medication. How big a dose is needed to help weight...

EXERCISE AND OXYGEN

The energy required by muscles to contract is produced by complex biochemical reactions. A critical contributor to the process is oxygen (O2). Oxygen comprises about 20% of the air we breathe. It is absorbed from the lungs onto the haemoglobin molecules in the...