Info: The Neuromuscular System: Exercising Your Most Important Organ

[froilanr]

Share ko rin ito mga kaibigan.

Di korin masyadong ma-intindihan ang ibang words dito. Pero at least nararagdagan ang aking knowledge. Sa health.

Nagkaka-edad narin ako. Kaya ko binabasa ito. Pero kung ganito narin ang edad niyo. Hope makakatulong ito. Or kahit sa mga wala pang 40 yrs old.

Thanks.


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Chapter 2 - The New You! You Are Not Merely a Bad Sequel to Your 20-Year-Old Self
Fitness After 40: How To Stay Strong At Any Age
by Vonda Wright and Ruth Winter
AMACOM © 2009 Citation


The Neuromuscular System: Exercising Your Most Important Organ

The mind-body connection refers to the way your nerves and muscles work together. A decrease in coordination, balance, fine-motor skills, and visual-spatial orientation, as well as an increase in motor response time and altered proprioception (the sense of orientation of one’s limbs in space), are all age-related changes in the neuromuscular system. Regular exercise seems to slow the rate of decline in many of these pathways.

As you were reading this chapter, you may have nodded as you recognized some of the changes you feel in your own body. You are no longer a mystery to yourself! But let’s put all this talk of slowing down into perspective. Remember the Senior Olympians we talked about earlier, whose times slowed by less than 2 percent per year until age 75, at which point their times grew dramatically longer? When you put those percentages into real performance times, you see that although performance slows, staying active and challenging the body with physical training can lead to remarkable functional capacity at any age. In 2001, the 50-year-old man who won the mile race at the National Summer Senior Games won it in 4:34! Let me repeat that: The 50-year-old winner ran the mile in 4:34! The 75-year-old male winner ran the mile in 7:00. Seven minutes is significantly faster than your average inactive 40-year-old can run a mile . . . if he can last a mile at all.

So now you know more about being an active athlete and exerciser after 40. You know that your body has gone through certain changes and that you have unique needs. Therefore, the important thing to remember is that many of the declines and changes seen with aging are more accurately attributed to a sedentary lifestyle or an incomplete approach to fitness and can be entirely preventable through proper training.

The take-home message here is that your body will change because of the biology of aging, but without the devastating factor of disuse, we are capable of remaining amazingly fast and functional as we age. Many of the changes popularly associated with aging are less the result of biology and more the result of the lifestyle choices you make as you grow older.

Let’s make some healthy lifestyle choices together. In the next several chapters, I will help you apply this knowledge toward slowing the declines usually blamed on age. As a result, you will increase your vigor and enjoyment of life.