Wonderfully Made

Living A Physically Active Life

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Don Morgan

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Series Code: WM

Program Code: WM000399


00:01 The following program presents principles
00:03 designed to promote good health and is
00:04 not intended to take the place of
00:05 personalized professional care.
00:08 The opinions and ideas expressed are those
00:10 of the speaker. Viewers are encouraged to draw
00:13 their own conclusions about
00:14 the information presented.
00:36 Whether you are youngster, a young adult
00:38 or in your golden years, physical activity is
00:42 vital to your health and well-being.
00:45 Hello and welcome to Wonderfully Made.
00:48 My name is Don Morgan and I'm an exercise
00:51 physiologist, who teaches in the Department of
00:53 Health and Human Performance at Middle
00:56 Tennessee State University. This is the final
01:00 presentation in a series of 11 programs that have
01:04 highlighted the importance of physical
01:06 activity as a corner stone of good health.
01:10 Today, I want to review some of the major points
01:14 that have been discussed in this health series.
01:17 So, that you can feel encouraged, energized,
01:21 and empowered to live a physically active life.
01:25 Towards the end of the program, I'll also share a
01:28 personal testimony about the positive changes that
01:32 have occurred in my own life as a result of
01:35 engaging in a regular routine of physical
01:38 activity and exercise. Early on in this series
01:45 I emphasized the spiritual dimensions of leading a
01:48 physically active life. If one considers examples
01:52 in the natural world, the heavenly bodies, which
01:55 surround us the oceans, the rivers, the roaring
01:59 surf, and the wind. The common feature of all
02:04 of these phenomena is motion and if one piers
02:10 inside the human body, physiological process is
02:14 like breathing, the circulation of the blood
02:18 and muscle contraction, all of these signify the life
02:22 giving properties associated with movement.
02:27 We worship a God, who has created a universe
02:31 that operates on the foundational principles of
02:35 action and motion. So, when we seek out
02:40 opportunities to be physically active, we fit
02:44 seamlessly into God's creation plan.
02:48 A plan in which movement and activity
02:51 are the norm and not the exception, in this health
02:57 series I have tried to impart factual
03:00 information about the many health benefits
03:02 of regular physical activity. However, knowledge
03:08 about the benefits of physical activity really
03:11 isn't much help, unless they are tied to the
03:14 practice of physical activity. For those of you,
03:19 who lead active lives there is almost an
03:23 instinctive understanding of how essential physical
03:27 activity is in the maintenance of good health.
03:32 If it's your desire to start down the road to better
03:36 health and fitness, it is vital to find a reason that
03:41 you can identify with for becoming physically active.
03:46 As I have mentioned before there is no single
03:50 overwriting rationale that will work for everyone,
03:54 but there is a reason to be active that will make
03:57 sense to each person watching this program today.
04:02 For example, perhaps you've come to appreciate
04:06 the sheer enormity of the health blessings that
04:10 come from adopting an active lifestyle.
04:14 If you've been watching this series of programs,
04:18 you've learned that health producing physical activity
04:21 can lower the risk of dying from heart disease,
04:24 reduce high blood pressure, prevent weight
04:28 gain, promote weight loss and decrease high fat
04:33 levels in the blood. Regular amounts of
04:37 physical activity and exercise can also lower
04:40 the risk of developing type II diabetes, reduce
04:44 the chance of developing some site-specific
04:47 cancers, increase muscular strength and
04:50 bone density and improve various aspects
04:55 of mental health. Maybe you are not functioning as
05:00 well as you used to and you want to become
05:03 stronger and more fit. So, that you can perform
05:06 daily living tasks more effectively.
05:11 It's possible that a recent medical crisis has gotten
05:14 your attention or you've decided that you want to
05:18 look and feel better or you've come to realize
05:23 that your health and well-being matters not just
05:27 to you but to others, who love you, care for you
05:33 and depend on you. Whatever it is that
05:36 motivates you to become more active, the key is to
05:41 find a reason that has personal meaning for you,
05:45 because it will be this reason that will serve as
05:49 an internal compass and guide to keep you
05:53 motivated to daily energize your
05:55 body with physical activity.
05:59 As you leave your sedentary existence
06:01 behind and begin to live an active life,
06:06 you will start to reap the physical, the mental, and
06:10 the spiritual blessings that God so wants to
06:13 bestow upon you. How much physical activity
06:19 is needed to improve ones health?
06:23 According to the 1996 Surgeon General's Report
06:26 on physical activity and health, people of all ages
06:31 should engage in a minimum of 30 minutes
06:34 of moderate physical activity on most,
06:37 if not all days of the week. This activity can
06:43 either be performed in one session or it can be
06:46 broken up into smaller chunks of time,
06:50 either approach can yield good health and
06:53 fitness benefits. One way to know that you are
06:57 exercising at a moderate intensity is if you can
07:01 easily carry on a conversation with a
07:04 fellow exerciser. Examples of health
07:08 producing physical activity can include
07:10 structured exercise like walking 30 minutes a day
07:15 or playing volleyball in a community league
07:18 two nights a week. Health benefits can also be
07:22 gained through more unstructured physical
07:24 activities like pushing a baby stroller, gardening
07:29 or playing pick up basketball on the weekend.
07:32 If you lead a busy life like I'm sure many of you do,
07:38 there are variety of simple, yet effective ways to
07:42 accumulate physical activity during the course
07:45 of a normal day. These include parking your
07:50 car farther away from where you work or shop
07:53 or getting off the bus or train several blocks from
07:56 your destination. If you are trying to get from point
08:01 A to point B meander or wander just a bit,
08:08 before you arrive at where you are going,
08:12 doing lunch or breaks in the work day, take a short
08:15 walk around your office building or when
08:18 transacting business at the local bank
08:22 avoid using the driven teller. You can play with
08:26 your kids or grand kids at home or at the park
08:30 or if you are watching TV avoid using the remote
08:34 control device and actually get up to change the
08:38 channels. Now, that is novel idea, even fidgeting
08:46 may help to limit unwanted weight gain,
08:51 there are numerous opportunities for each of
08:53 us to engage in health producing physical
08:56 activity, all we have to do is to take advantage of
09:01 them, by accumulating small bits of physical
09:05 activities throughout the day you will eventually
09:09 notice definite improvements in your
09:11 overall health status. You know we make time
09:17 to do the things that hold a lot of importance for us,
09:22 whether it's shopping at the mall, spending time
09:25 with loved ones or watching the Super Bowl
09:29 with friends, we make time to do the things that
09:32 have meaning for us. When you are attempted
09:35 to think that you just don't have enough time to
09:38 exercise, I want you to remember something
09:41 and that is this, there are 1440 minutes in everyday.
09:49 Your goal is to simply try and spend at least 30 of
09:53 them being physical active.
09:58 In the fourth program in this series, we examine the
10:02 physical activity levels of a Canadian Amish
10:05 Farming Community. The Amish continue to live
10:10 as they have for centuries, avoiding electricity,
10:14 gas power transportation as well as other
10:17 conveniences of modern society that we have
10:19 come to take for granted. In a study of nearly 100
10:25 Amish men and women, who lived in rural setting,
10:29 pedometers were used to quantify their physical
10:32 activity levels. Findings from this investigation
10:36 reveled that the Amish men averaged more than
10:39 18000 steps per day, while the Amish women
10:44 took more than 14000 steps per day.
10:49 Using a threshold of 10,000 steps per day as
10:52 being indicative of an active person, it's clear
10:56 that the normal physical labor and work tasks
10:59 performed by the Amish study participants were
11:03 reflective of a very active lifestyle.
11:08 From a health perspective, the levels of obesity and
11:11 excessive weight seen in this group were much
11:15 lower than values reported for age-matched
11:18 non-Amish adults and given the typical Amish
11:24 Diet, which is high in fat and refined sugar
11:29 and includes staples such as meat, potatoes, gravy,
11:32 eggs and desserts. It seems reasonable to
11:36 suggest that the elevated level of lifestyle physical
11:40 activity displayed by the Amish was a key factor in
11:46 explaining their lower incidence of obesity and
11:49 overweightness compared to the general population.
11:56 Those who have listened to me in earlier programs
11:59 know that I am a strong proponent of using
12:02 pedometers like these, to estimate the volume of
12:06 physical activity performed in activities like walking
12:09 or running. The first step in using a pedometer is
12:16 to determine your average daily step count,
12:19 to do this simply record how many steps you take
12:24 each day with your pedometer over a five to
12:27 seven day period and then average these daily values
12:32 to derive your normal daily step count.
12:36 Once you've calculated this figure increase the
12:39 number of steps taken by approximately 10%
12:44 and attempt to increase your lifestyle physical
12:46 activity over the next one to two weeks using
12:50 some of the examples I talked about before to
12:53 reach this new goal. If you are able to attain
12:58 this goal, continue to establish new stepping
13:02 levels in the coming weeks until you arrive at
13:06 a daily step count that you are comfortable with
13:10 and that you feel you can reasonably sustain.
13:14 On the other hand if you don't reach your step
13:17 goal, continue to work towards it or reduce it
13:22 slightly until you're successful.
13:26 For many people pedometers serve as an
13:29 excellent motivational tool and can provide a
13:33 good sense of whether you are on track in
13:36 accumulating physical activity or whether you are
13:39 behind and need to step up your daily activity level.
13:47 One important take home message from this series
13:50 of programs has been that you don't have to engage
13:53 in hard vigorous physical activity to secure
13:57 important health benefits. Data from the Cooper
14:02 Institute for aerobics research has shown that
14:04 men and women exhibiting high levels of
14:07 fitness, displayed the lowest mortality rates
14:11 from both heart disease as well as cancer,
14:15 when compared to persons of poor or
14:17 average fitness. However individuals who exhibited
14:22 just average levels of fitness displayed much
14:26 lower heart disease and cancer death rates than
14:29 those with poor fitness levels.
14:33 To me these findings provide a message of
14:36 hope and encouragement because they show that
14:40 you don't need to exhibit athletic levels of fitness
14:44 to markedly lower your risk of dying from
14:47 common lifestyle diseases like heart
14:49 disease and cancer. By consistently
14:54 accumulating at least 30 minutes of moderate
14:57 intensity physical activity on a daily basis,
15:02 you too can begin to improve your fitness level
15:06 and in the process substantially
15:10 reduce your likelihood of death.
15:15 At the beginning of this program I touched on
15:18 the importance of being physically active
15:21 throughout all phases of ones life.
15:25 In this series I devoted one program exclusively
15:30 to the impact of physical activity in combating
15:33 childhood obesity. Over the past 30 years the
15:38 prevalence of childhood obesity has risen from
15:42 5 to 14% in pre-school children from 4 to 19%
15:49 in children aged six to 11 and from 6 to over 17%
15:56 in children 12 to 19 years of age.
16:01 Moreover the likelihood that an obese child will
16:04 become an obese adult increases as children
16:09 grow older. These sobering statistics
16:13 emphasize the need for parents and schools
16:17 to promote physical activity early in a child's
16:20 life to prevent or to moderate excessive weight gain.
16:28 There is much that can be done to raise levels of
16:31 childhood physical activity both in the home
16:34 as well as at school. At home, physical activity
16:39 should be a family affair with time for all to
16:43 participate in activities that everyone can enjoy.
16:48 Whenever possible the goal should be to
16:51 maximize outside time and to minimize inside
16:56 time. As parents it's important to make time
17:01 to take your children to places where they can be
17:03 active like parks and playgrounds.
17:08 In addition, you can join together with other
17:11 families to play basketball, touch football, soccer
17:16 or even hide and seek, children along with other
17:21 family members can be assigned active household
17:25 duties like vacuuming, washing the car
17:28 or mowing the lawn. If your child spends too
17:33 many hours of the day in front of a television
17:35 set or a computer screen, you can begin to
17:39 gradually reduce the amount of time spent
17:43 watching TV, playing computer games,
17:46 or surfing the internet by substituting more
17:50 active pass times. Perhaps the strongest
17:54 statement that parents can make to their children
17:57 is to model a physically active lifestyle,
18:03 my wife and I try to model MIDI behaviors
18:06 to our children like honesty, the value of hard
18:10 work, kindness, responsibility, respect for
18:15 others; behaviors that we want our children to
18:18 emulate. When your children see you been
18:23 physically active on a consistent basis, you are
18:26 not only role modeling a good health habit, but
18:30 you are also speaking volumes to your children
18:34 about how important physical activity is to you.
18:41 When the entire family engages in physical
18:43 activity together everyone receives a good workout,
18:48 everyone expend some energy and everyone in
18:52 the family connects emotionally.
18:56 This last point is very important because what
19:00 most children really want is to simply spend
19:05 more time with their parents.
19:09 Since children spend most of their waking hours at
19:12 school, it's vital to support and lobby for
19:15 quality physical education programs.
19:18 Physical education is a vital component of the
19:21 overall educational curriculum, because it is
19:24 in these classes the children learn how to
19:27 perform the fundamental motor skills that are
19:31 needed to successfully participate in lifetime
19:33 physical activities. Moreover recent findings
19:38 have shown a strong relationship between
19:41 physical fitness levels and academic performance
19:44 as measured by standardized test scores,
19:47 which implies a positive link between a healthy
19:51 body and good school performance.
19:56 Daily time for an structured physical
19:58 activity like recess must also be protected.
20:03 Recent guideline suggest that school age children
20:06 should accumulate at least 60 minutes and up
20:09 to several hours of age appropriate physical
20:12 activity on all or most days of the week.
20:18 It's also recommended that children avoid
20:20 prolong periods of inactivity, especially
20:23 during day light hours. As a final point, it's
20:27 essential that infants, toddlers and preschoolers
20:31 be given ample opportunity to participate in structured
20:35 as well as unstructured physical activity
20:37 experiences in safe and encouraging
20:39 environments. As very young children learn
20:43 how to walk, run, jump, throw, catch and kick
20:47 they begin developing the foundational motor
20:50 skills that are necessary for more complex
20:53 fitness and sport activities.
20:57 At the other end of the lifespan continuum,
21:00 we have either reached our golden years or we
21:03 are on route to reaching them. Consequently it is
21:08 so important for older adults to remain
21:11 physically active, in fact regular doses of
21:15 physical activity can prevent or reduce
21:17 declines in physical function, improve aerobic
21:20 endurance and muscle strength and lower insulin
21:24 resistance in the senior population.
21:27 Other benefits include better bone health,
21:30 less risk for falls and related injuries or
21:33 fractures, increased flexibility and joint range
21:37 of motion and the preservation of cognitive function.
21:42 Overall a regular program of physical activity can
21:47 contribute to a healthy and independent lifestyle
21:50 for the older individual and can lead to better
21:53 functional capacity and a higher quality of life.
21:59 If you have followed the series of programs
22:02 you know that I am an avid runner.
22:06 Well, my pace might charitably be described
22:09 as pedestrian; I really enjoy being able to run
22:13 along the country roads and rolling hills
22:16 of Middle Tennessee. To me there is a wonderful
22:21 sense of freedom that comes from feeling the
22:23 sun and wind against my face, as I run along the
22:27 back roads and survey the rural scenes that dot my
22:32 running path. As a child going up in Hawaii
22:37 I enjoyed many land and water sports and as a
22:41 young adult I played competitive volleyball,
22:45 however with the passage of time I gradually
22:49 became less consistent in my own exercise and
22:53 activity habits, this reduction in physical
22:57 activity became more noticeable about 15 years ago,
23:02 by then I was still physically active but on a
23:06 much more irregular basis. I was busy starting
23:10 a career in my academic field and that took a lot of
23:13 energy, which left less time to devote to
23:17 exercise. In addition, I'd just become a new father
23:22 and I was busy learning how to do that job
23:26 in addition to trying to be a good husband.
23:29 So, I simply rationalize that I didn't have enough
23:32 time to be physically active the way I used to be.
23:37 The first sign that something might be
23:39 wrong with this picture was when I was running
23:42 with a friend and noticed that my heart
23:45 was beating irregularly, because I didn't feel any
23:49 pain or chest pressure I just choked this up as
23:53 an anomaly. However after this happened
23:57 again I was curious so I hooked myself up to an
24:01 EKG machine in my exercise laboratory and
24:05 I monitored my heart activity as I ran on a
24:07 treadmill, as I increased the exercise intensity
24:12 I started noticing that my heart was beating
24:14 more and more irregularly, I stopped the treadmill
24:18 and wondered what's going on here.
24:22 I went to a physician, who ran a complete
24:25 physical on me and he found nothing wrong,
24:27 but he said, why don't you complete a graded
24:30 exercise in the cardiologist office just to be sure.
24:35 I knew of a heart doctor who came with high
24:38 recommendations and I scheduled a
24:40 visit to his office. However, the next day
24:43 just before Sabbath began so it was Friday evening
24:47 I started experiencing continuous heart
24:50 palpitations and I knew enough to realize that
24:53 this wasn't normal that had never occurred before
24:58 and I was as you might imagine very
25:00 apprehensive, so all of us myself, my wife,
25:04 and my one-year-old daughter we all raised to
25:07 the local emergency room, where I spent hours
25:09 hooked up to an EKG machine, as I laid in bed
25:13 trying to remain calm I looked up at my EKG
25:17 reading and I, a number of questions raised
25:19 through my mind, questions that a new
25:22 father shouldn't ever have to ponder.
25:25 Questions like am I going to have heart attack tonight
25:28 and maybe die or will I be able to see my daughter
25:32 grow up or how can I leave my wife with the
25:36 task of raising my daughter. Eventually after four
25:41 hours had passed the palpitations finally
25:44 stopped and we were able to go home, thankful that
25:47 at least for the moment all seemed to be okay.
25:51 I was however shaken to the core and I felt very
25:55 uneasy about what it happened. A few days
25:58 later I underwent a treadmill exercise test
26:01 and consoled myself with a thought that if
26:03 I collapse or passed out at least it would happen in
26:06 a cardiologist office, the result of the test indicated
26:10 that well I did not have any underlying cardiac
26:13 disease, my aerobic fitness was much lower
26:16 than I expected and my blood pressure was in
26:18 elevated range, while the doctor was telling me
26:22 what I needed to do, I thought to myself
26:26 I know exactly what I need to do, I am an
26:28 exercise physiologist. So, from that day forward
26:32 I began walking in the morning and afternoon
26:35 with my wife and soon I was walking dozens of
26:38 miles per week and after a couple of months
26:41 realizing that my heart was still working fine
26:45 I began to run and I've been running fairly
26:48 consistently ever since. I now know that the
26:51 palpitations I experienced were benign and unrelated
26:55 to heart disease however this entire experience was
26:59 a wakeup call to drastically change my approach to
27:03 been physically active. I have no doubt that
27:07 I would have had a major health set back, had I not
27:10 started and maintained a regular program of
27:13 physical activity. My quality of life and
27:16 my ability to perform daily living activities is
27:19 immeasurably better because of the strength
27:22 and fitness that I have gained by finding a place
27:25 for regular physical activity in my life.
27:29 The reason that I've shared this story with you
27:31 is because it illustrates what my reason is for
27:34 adopting a healthy lifestyle. Earlier in this
27:37 program I talked about the need to find a
27:40 personal reason to be physically active,
27:43 for those of you who have listened to this series of
27:46 programs and have been motivated to start and to
27:48 maintain a program of physical activity, you too
27:52 will eventually have a story to tell that will be
27:55 equally meaningful and may lead
27:57 others to adopt an active lifestyle.
28:01 I wish the best for each of you and just
28:03 remember keep walking step by
28:06 step towards better health and fitness.


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Revised 2014-12-17