Healthy Aging Through Movement

Introduction: Movement is a key part of staying healthy. Most of us have heard about the need to exercise to keep our body healthy. That we need to do exercise or activity to improve or maintain our cardiovascular and aerobic energy levels. That we need to do strength training to keep our muscles and our abilities to do the activities we want to do. And that we need to stretch to keep ourselves limber. Those are all valid suggestions. They just don’t contain the whole picture of how moving, which exercise is one part of, can help your body, mind and soul stay healthy.  

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to introduce a more comprehensive picture of how movement helps us stay healthy and slows down the aging process. My goal is to give you a more complete picture of how your body works through movement in an accessible way so that you can apply this knowledge and begin moving toward a healthier you and slowing down your aging process. I’m going to begin with the Nervous System. The system that controls every other system in our bodies including movement. I’ll split it into 2 sections for convenience. 

The Nervous System: 

Part 1: a basic introduction: 

Our nervous system is vast and complex. To simplify our discussion, I’ll define it as the system that controls every other system in our body via the brain and nerve tissue. On a basic level our nervous system monitors our body and the environment we are existing in at any given time. With this information it can adapt to changing circumstances within that environment. A part of our brain is on constant alert for threats. The first objective is survival, so it makes sense that a part of our brain is dedicated to looking out for circumstances that may cause harm to us.  

When this part of the brain perceives that we are safe our body tends to be relaxed, our breathing slow and steady and our heart rate on the low side. That’s the state we are primarily designed to be in for the least stress upon our body. Spending more time in this state leads to a healthier body, mind and mental/emotional state which equates to less stress on us as a person. Thus, creating the conditions where our bodies components are the healthiest provides a more durable aging experience. 

When this part of the brain perceives a threat, it goes into action. It gears our bodies up to run away from or fight the perceived threat. There are a couple of other responses it may produce but for simplicity we’ll just highlight these two. This call to action increases our heart rate, blood pressure, and muscular tension in certain areas. Our breathing also becomes rapid and shallow with the release of chemicals designed to promote these processes and give our bodies the capability to deal with these perceived threats. Staying in this state tends to wear down our body as a whole and leads to the degradation of the body's physical, mental and emotional state. Over time this leads to a less durable and unpleasant aging experience. It creates those conditions that many of us associate with the aging process.