You may have recently noticed you are taking more sick days. You probably are contracting colds and the flu more easily these days than when you were younger. It also may be taking you longer to recover these days.
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 want to prevent being a part of these statistics, you must boost your immune system. One of the best ways to do this naturally is through fitness over 50. Many fitness experts recommend bodybuilding as their preferred method to improve total health and the immune system.
Bodybuilding builds muscle and this helps your immune system on several levels. Muscle burns more calories than fat, therefore it prevents weight gain. Doctors know that people who are overweight are more likely to have poor immune health and get sick. Also, bodybuilding improves blood circulation. It strengthens your heart and lungs, but it also helps build up vessel walls. This makes it easier for nutrients and antibodies to easily travel throughout your body fighting colds, flu, infection, and many other ailments. This means that you can more easily resist colds and flu and you can get well sooner.
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.
It is also important that you have a diet that both supports your bodybuilding goals and promotes immune health. You will want to eat plenty of proteins and complex carbohydrates to compliment your training. Also, make sure you include antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals in your diet or through supplements to give your body an extra boost during 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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