Find Out About Immune System Health Over 50 and Bodybuilding
As you have gotten older, you may be taking more and more sick days. You probably have found that you contract colds and flu more often than when you were younger. You might also have noticed that it is now harder to recover from these bugs.
In fact, the average person over 50 is likely to catch 2 to 4 more colds each year than men and women between 20 and 40. These bugs often escalate into sinusitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, or worse. Seniors represent more than 60% of the 36,000 annual flu related deaths. Long waits, inaccurate formulas, and shortages mean that you cannot always count on a vaccine to save you.
If you do not want to become one of these statistics, it is important that you boost your immune system. Fitness over 50 is one of the best natural ways to improve your immune health. In fact, many fitness experts recommend bodybuilding as a method to improve your overall health and increase your immune system.
Bodybuilding increases muscle mass which promotes immune health in many ways. Muscle burns more calories than fat and helps prevent weight gain. Doctors have found that overweight people have poor immune health and get sick more frequently. Bodybuilding boosts your circulation, which strengthens your heart and lungs. It also thickens blood vessels. This means that it is easier for antibodies and nutrients to travel through your body to fight colds, flu, infections, and other ailments. This means that you are able to resist illness and can recover more quickly.
Rest is an essential part of bodybuilding over 50 and boosting your immune system. There are opponents to bodybuilding who claim that it hurts your immune system. However, it is really overtraining that can hurt your immune system, as well as the rest of your body. Those who perform high intensity training in shorter cycles do not allow time for proper rest. They typically get sick more frequently and have longer healing times. This is because their short rest period forces the body to repair muscle and 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 totally avoid ever catching a cold or flu. However, you can control how often you suffer and the length of your recovery. If you are over 50 catching the common cold can have serious repercussions. If you want to stay healthy throughout cold and flu season, now is the time to start focusing on fitness.
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