Aerobics: Its Need and Social Acceptance

In the current ‘super’ turmoil world, rising heart trouble is a common denominator in almost every family. It was not so much that people are dying; they were killing themselves! Specialists in preventive medicine have proclaimed for years that with proper weight, proper diet, proper exercise, controlling blood pressure, and eliminating the use of tobacco, heart disease can be controlled. And this is the major reason of people are now more and more inclining towards aerobics training.

Aerobics and Types

Many people have this notion that aerobics means running, but it is only the visible tip of the iceberg. Other sports like jogging, tennis, racketball, cycling, skiing, swimming, soccer are also at a record high in aerobics training.

Nowadays, aerobics are also considered a competitive sport to encourage and incite excitement. Aerobic gymnastics, which is a competitive aerobics involving complicated dance patterns, rhythmic and acrobatic gymnastics. These are divided into different categories by age, sex, and groups.

There are different types of aerobics, which is practiced by people. These are:

Freestyle aerobics
Step aerobics
Sport aerobics
Water aerobics
Yoga Postures

Why Aerobics?

Aerobics significantly decreases death from heart disease, along with a slight increase in the average life span. The preventive actions with aerobics exercises control risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease and strokes. In fact, prevention is the only approach to controlling heart disease that offers hope for the future.

In the US one man in three will have symptomatic arterial disease before age sixty. And early death from acute myocardial infarction will be the first and only symptom in about 40 percent of these cases. If you are an American, the odds are very strong, no matter who you are, that your heart needs help – with a systematized preventive program.

The treatment options currently available if your heart hasn’t had preventive care and does begin to show symptoms. We have medications for treatment of some cases. There are the well-publicized heart transplants and pacemakers, and there is also the widely used coronary bypass operation, in which occluded coronary arteries are bypassed with other blood vessels.

What about medication, transplants, pacemakers? Again, consider the expense, and consider the odds – which are no more encouraging than those for coronary bypass surgery. Also, consider that if you do require medical or surgical treatment, you must still follow many of the preventive or rehabilitative medical practices mentioned in aerobics training.

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Where Do I Start My Aerobics?

In many cases, people may ask; “what’s so different about a preventing medical examination?” In a word, exercise. A complete cardiac examination not only consists of the blood tests, the medical history, listening to the chest, and blood pressure determination that nearly everyone is familiar with; it also requires that your heart be monitored during rest and exercise with an electrocardiograph. This monitoring is called a maximal or near-maximal performance exercise electrocardiogram or, in shorter terms, a stress ECG. Don’t confuse the stress ECG with a resting ECG. If your physician monitors your heart’s performance while you recline on the examining table, that’s a resting electrocardiogram.

The Stress ECG

The resting ECG is not an adequate test for heart abnormality. The reason for this inadequacy is not at all difficult to understand: It’s as basic as the need for a highway test if you’re about to buy a used car. You wouldn’t switch on the ignition; let the engine idle there in the parking lot, and then buy the car, would you? Of course not. If you wanted to test that car for problems, you’d get it out on the highway. You’d accelerate to a high speed. You’d see how that car performed under stress.

The same principle holds true for your heart. In order to determine if it has problem areas that need attention, we have to see how it performs under stress. When it’s functioning at a high rate of speed, it may have difficulties that simply don’t show up while you’re resting. And since your heart needs to function at high speeds on various occasions during your daily routine, we ought to know about those difficulties so we can take action.

False Positive and False Negative

There are very few tests of human function or performance that are 100 percent reliable. The treadmill test is in this category, but, utilizing the latest technology, the false-negative responses can be kept to a minimum. With a false negative test, the ECG is normal but in reality, the patient has one or more coronary arteries that are partially locked, as shown by X-ray of the heart. In these cases, usually, the obstruction is minimal or there is adequate collateral circulation around the obstruction.

A false positive test is also occasionally seen, In such cases the stress ECG is abnormal but a subsequent coronary arteriogram is normal. False positive tests are more commonly seen in women. Certain medications can cause this type of response, and there also exists the possibility of an obstruction in a small vessel – to small to be seen on the coronary arteriogram.

Fitness Classification

There is another reason to take the stress ECG test up to the maximal heart rate and voluntary fatigue. Not only does this test give an indication of cardiac abnormality, but it also is an accurate measure of your level of fitness. And the fitness level, we’re finding, is another important diagnostic tool when it comes to making a prognosis regarding the health of your heart.

What is your fitness level? Simply put, it’s your endurance or aerobic capacity – determined by the amount of time you can stay on the treadmill, maintaining that 3.3 mph speed while the incline gets progressively steeper.

Your physician can now be precise about where to start you off in your exercise program. Since he knows what you can do today, he’s in a better position to judge what kind of workouts you should be doing tomorrow and in the weeks to come. He can prescribe activity that will produce a “training effect” yet without placing undue stress and
hardship on your system.