Importance
Your level of aerobic fitness is the symptom of the efficient function of all the major body systems which are dedicated to maintaining healthy cellular function, including the lungs, the blood, the heart and the systems involved in elimination.
Aerobic fitness is the body’s mechanism for:
– getting oxygen into your lungs, passed into your blood stream, pumped arou
nd by your heart and distributed to the cells of your body
– removing the waste products of metabolism out of the cells of your body, into the blood stream and out of your body.
Aerobic fitness is, along with the fuel you put into your body, one of the key drivers of healthy metabolic function.
Let your aerobic fitness run down and you can be pretty certain that sooner or later you’ll start experiencing some of the symptoms of metabolic dysfunction. You stack on weight, your blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol levels go up. You feel tired and depressed …
Aerobic fitness exercise is the body’s ‘turbo-charging’ mechanism designed to make sure that all the trillions of cells in your body are getting the oxygen (and nutrients they need to work efficiently.
It is the mechanism for boosting the various elimination systems, including the lymphatic system, the blood, liver, kidneys, bowel, skin and lungs.
“THE BETTER THE CELLS WORK THE HEALTHIER YOU ARE.”
It revitalises the concept of aerobic fitness to ascribe as its main benefit your ability to do more vigorous, muscular, physical activity for longer periods of time. Sure that is what happens, but it is a by product, a symptom of the fact that a range of body systems are working more efficiently, not just your muscles.
We all know that the mind is connected to the body; eg when we get anxious we may exhibit physical symptoms (headaches, sore shoulders, high blood pressure, crook guts …). This is known as the psychosomatic effect. What is less well known is the somato-psychic effect, where once the body is stimulated into action through an aerobic exercise program there is an impact on the mind – you feel better.
THE AEROBIC STANDARD
Of all the measures of how well your body is working, your level of aerobic fitness stands out head and shoulders above the rest, much more so than blood pressure, blood cholesterol and blood glucose. You can still have normal blood pressure long after the efficiency of the major body systems has decreased.
In this respect, a drop in aerobic fitness is the first of the warning signs that the metabolic health system function is being compromised. An elevation in blood pressure may not occur for years and then the systems may be so far ‘gone’ that the situation can be irretrievable. You’ve got permanent body system dysfunction and you’re destined to be on one or more of the symptom-masking pharmaceuticals for the rest of your life.
Having said all that, it’s usually the case that when we talk about aerobic fitness we start talking about our ability do things that require physical effort – whether it’s walking to the end of the street, walking up a couple of flights of stairs, going on a hike, playing a game of tennis…
Wouldn’t it be awful to restrict your choices in life because you hadn’t bothered to keep yourself fit enough to do them?
As we get fitter we can do more and we can do it for longer.