health & beauty
Epoch Times
june 5 – 18, 2015 31
Body by Skipping the Gym?
fact, you need to allow your body to fully
recuperate in between sessions in order for
the exercise to remain productive. Remember
that, as your fitness increases, the intensity
of your exercise goes up, and the frequency
that your body can tolerate goes down. As a
result, you need to continuously customise
your program to your own fitness level and
other lifestyle issues.
As a general rule however, you do not
want to do high-intensity interval training
exercises more than three times a week.
High-intensity strength training can be
done twice a week initially, but as you get
stronger you will need more recovery time
and eventually drop down to once every 7-10
days. Any more than that and you’ll put your
body under too much strain.
With High-Intensity Exercise,
Less Is More
One of the major benefits of high intensity
exercises is that it allows your body to
produce human growth hormone (HGH),
commonly referred to as “the fitness
hormone”. However, as explained by Dr.
Doug McGuff in a previous interview, once
you’re fit, you really don’t need frequent
spurts of growth hormone production.
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At that point, recovery actually takes
precedence as being more important, and
your recovery period could be anywhere
from three to seven days. In fact, he strongly
recommends NOT exercising too frequently
once you are in fit condition, and here’s why:
“[Y]our adrenal gland… sits right above
your kidneys, and it’s arranged in layers.
On the outermost layers, you have mineral
corticoids that control your sodium and
your electrolyte levels. In the middle layer,
you have your corticosteroids that control
sugar and generate stress hormones.
And in the innermost layer is where you
generate growth hormones and the sex
steroids, or that’s involved in the axis, in the
feedback loop that generates that. The old
saying in medical school to memorise the
three layers is ‘salt, sugar, sex’—the deeper
you go, the better it gets.
But you got to remember, your adrenal
gland is an integrated organ. Those three
layers are not perfectly divided. If through
high-intensity exercise you’re trying to
hammer that adrenal gland three times per
week, but now you’re much stronger and
your body hasn’t fully recovered from your
Monday session and you come back and hit
it again on Wednesday… you’re going to
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tap down into that deeper level. Instead of
growth hormones spurt, you’re going to get
in a cortisol spurt. You’re going to completely
undermine what it is that you’re after.”
When Should You Skip the
Gym?
One of the benefits of being fit is that you
can take time off and recover and use the
reserves that you have built up to help you
recover. It is kind of like having stored fat
during times of famine. One time to rely on
those “reserves” is when your body is under
stress from being sick. You’ll generally want
to seek rest as your body mobilises to fight off
the illness, but you’ll need to listen to your
body to know for sure.
If you have enough energy to tolerate
it, increasing your body temperature by
sweating from exercise will actually help to
kill many viruses. Over-exercising will place
more stress on your body, however, which
can suppress your immune system, so you
should keep the intensity of your workouts
on a moderate level if you’re sick (such as
taking a brisk walk). It’s generally advised
that you avoid exercise if you have symptoms
that are “below your neck,” such as:
• Fever
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• Coughing or chest congestion
• Fatigue
• Widespread body and muscle aches
• Vomiting, upset stomach, and/or
stomach cramps
But no matter what your symptoms, you
need to be very careful and listen to your
body. If you don’t feel up to it, and all you
want to do is get some rest, then that’s what
your body needs. And I can’t stress enough
that if you don’t feel well, you should not do
your full, normal exercise routine, as that
could clearly stress your immune system
even more and prolong your illness if you are
not careful and wind up overdoing it.
High-intensity exercise like Peak Fitness
should be avoided when you’re sick, because
any kind of intensive exercise boosts
production of cortisol, a stress hormone that
inhibits the activity of natural killer cells—a
type of white blood cell that attacks and rids
your body of viral agents.
This is why running a marathon can
actually increase your chances of getting sick
shortly thereafter. In fact, elite endurance
athletes can suffer anywhere from two to six
times as many upper respiratory infections
during a year compared to average, active
individuals.
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