Discover About How Bodybuilding Helps To Boost Your Immune System If You Are Over Fifty
As you have aged, you may have noticed you are taking more sick days. You may catch the flu and colds more easily than you did when you were younger. Also, it is probably taking you longer to recover these days.
It is common for the average man or woman over 50 to catch 2 to 4 more colds yearly than someone between ages 20 and 40. Many times this can escalate into sinusitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, or worse. Seniors make up more than 60% of the annual 36,000 flu related deaths. Long waits, inaccurate formulas, and shortages means that you cannot rely on a vaccine to protect you.
To prevent becoming one of those statistics, you need to boost your immune health. Fitness over 50 is the best natural way to improve your immune system. In fact, many fitness experts recommend bodybuilding as a preferred method to improve both your overall health and increase your immune system.
Bodybuilding increases your muscles which boosts your immune system in several ways. Muscles burn more calories than fat which prevents weight gain. Doctors have learned that people who are overweight commonly have poor immune health and get sick more frequently. Bodybuilding improves your entire cardiovascular system, strengthens your heart and lungs, and thickens blood vessel walls. This means your antibodies and nutrients travel easily throughout your body to fight infections, colds, flu, and other ailments. This means that you can better resist illnesses and recover more quickly.
Rest is a very important part of bodybuilding over 50 and boosting your immune system. Many of the opponents to bodybuilding claim that it can harm your immune system. However, the fact is that overtraining hurts your immune system, as well as the rest of your body. Those who perform high intensity workouts in short cycles do not give their body adequate rest and are more likely to get sick with longer healing times. This is because they rest only long enough for their body to make minimal muscle repairs. Therefore, the body is forced to focus only on building muscle and must ignore the immune system.
Bodybuilders using low intensity training have the opposite experience and substantially decrease their number of sick days each year. This is because their training schedule allows for both muscle improvement and total body renewal, including your immune system. When you get older, you require more time for rest and renewal. It is ideal for you to have a longer training cycle that includes one day of rest to each day of training.
You also should eat a diet that supports your bodybuilding goals and boosts your immune system. Proteins and complex carbohydrates are preferred. You will also want to include foods rich in antioxidants, vitamins, and mineral. If you do not get these in your diets, then you should take supplements to give yourself a boost while training.
No one can completely prevent ever catching a cold or flu. You can control how often you get sick and your recovery time. These illnesses can have serious repercussions for people over 50. If you want to stay well through the next cold and flu season then you need to focus on fitness now.
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