There is a Japanese proverb that says, “Be not afraid of going slowly. Be afraid of standing still.”
Your body works best when it’s moving, so what happens to your body when it doesn’t get enough exercise?
Well, what happens is called deconditioning, and this article will explain what it means for the different parts of your body like the heart, energy levels, muscle and soft tissue, your bones and body fat.
- Your heart: Your heart is one big muscle and your muscles grow uniformly with suitable challenges. Your heart muscle is different from your skeletal (means boney framework) muscle that moves your arms and legs, but most of the same principles apply when it comes down to fitness. Your heart needs to be challenged, and your heart gets that challenge by physical activities and exercise. Without a regular workout, your heart muscles will atrophy or shrink. The result is a weakened and less efficient pumping, which delivers less blood with each stroke, so that the heart rate, the speed your heart pumps, has to increase to make up for the lack of blood that is not being delivered. Your blood flow becomes slow, making the blood vessel walls more subject to plaque (the substance that builds up on the walls of the blood vessels clogging them). Your blood vessel narrows, giving to further loss of productive blood flow and to higher blood pressure, then the exchange of oxygen and nutrients from your capillaries (microscopic blood vessels) into your skeletal (boney framework) muscles, body organs, and tissues slows down. This happens partly because the number of capillaries is reduced, and partly because there are fewer exchange sites in the cell walls and fewer of the proteins that exchange oxygen and nutrients into the cells at these sites. Initial exchange of oxygen into the blood as it moves through the lungs is affected in a similar way and your hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in the blood, is slower to pick up and release the oxygen and there is less hemoglobin available. Carbon dioxide, along with other waste products that collect in your blood from energy output and body repair and the building processes, has the same kind of problem as it returns to the lungs to be breathed out. There’s also another problem for the retuning blood, most of it has to fight the effects of gravity. Without a well-functioning delivery, blood tends to pool in your arms and legs, increasing the likelihood of plaque formation in your veins and causing the feet, ankles, and hands to swell. On top of that, poor circulation means a slower reaction to changes in your body position, so that when you stand up quickly, blood doesn’t get to your head as fast as it should and you get dizzy.
- Your energy levels: The cells of your muscles, organs, and your body tissues have energy-producing structures called mitochondria. Every function in the body requires energy produced by these structures and to create energy, the mitochondria need oxygen and carbohydrates. When your oxygen supply is gone or slowed down, and when the waste products of your energy production accumulate and aren’t removed fast enough (this occurs when the heart isn’t achieving the maximum result with the minimum effort), the number of mitochondria drops and the quality of the efficiency of each is reduced. Energy production slows down, and then you end up using the same amount of energy but get less work done, and fatigue will set in much sooner.
- Your muscle and soft tissue: Increased heart rate is one of the basic and important signs of an out-of-shape heart, the signs of an out-of-shape skeletal (boney framework) muscle include a loss of muscle tone and strength. The tiny flexible, threadlike appendages of each fiber of every skeletal muscle needs the stimulus of work, without work, the flow of blood in the muscle slows down, and there’s a decrease in the exchange of waste products and nutrients. Loss of mitochondria in the cells, as well as a decrease in filament (those tiny, flexible, threadlike appendages) overlap and muscle fiber size, changes into a slower speed of muscle contraction, reaction, and coordination. This change comes from a degrading of the connection between the nerves and muscles. The tiny electrical impulses that tell muscles what to do, don’t work as well when they aren’t used. This will lead to a decrease in strength, insufficient response times, and a reduced ability to move. This problem adds to the shrinking of muscle mass and the risks for injury increases.
- Your bones: While your muscles like work, so do your bones, and they’re happiest when they get moved by muscles and are shaken by the shocks of weight-bearing. Bones love to store up calcium but without weight-bearing exercise, bones fall into a lowering in functional activity: they lose density, they can’t rebuild as effectively and their calcium stores decrease, and weaken over time. Ultimately the end point for bones in the deconditioning process is the development of osteoporosis, and with osteoporosis the density of the bones’ significantly decreases, and the bones become more prone to fracture. Also, when bones aren’t able to store calcium, there’s more of the mineral circulating to other places in your body, like the kidneys, where a buildup leads to kidney stones.
- Body fat: While blood flow, nutrient exchange, energy production, muscle fibers, and bones are headed down the tubes, fat is running a muck. The carbohydrates are not being used for energy production and they’re looking for somewhere to go. Although, fat is handy for storage, it has a minimal metabolic demand and it needs less energy to sustain itself, so it isn’t concerned about a slow blood flow, decreased energy production, or atrophy. Fat is nice in small amounts or when it’s placed in strategic places over the body but it can be a bit overwhelming when it takes over the whole body and then you’re stuck carrying it around with you. It doesn’t have to be very visible, although it is most of the time, it just seems to creep into the places where inactivity has forced lean tissue (muscle) to leave.
The downside of deconditioning is that no one who is inactive escapes it, even though it may happen at different rates and in different ways to each of us. The effects will depend on how long your inactivity lasts, how fit you are when it started, and what kind of training or activities you have participated in prior to being immobilized.
Inactivity can devastate your body, and especially if you are already experiencing an inflammatory condition such as RA. While the regular body functions are slowing down, inflammation is able to maintain itself more forcefully. I guess the lesson here is that deconditioning isn’t good for anyone, and if you have arthritis it will only add to your pain, your stillness, and any mobility problems you have. So, you see, exercise can help you, by improving the function of the heart pump and blood flow, increasing the number of mitochondria for energy production, improving muscle strength and endurance, building bone health, and reducing the fat stores and as a bonus exercise also increases your self-esteem.
Make the most of the body you have and keep it moving! Don’t be afraid of going slowly, instead, be afraid of standing still.
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