Myths Surrounding Exercises; Here What You Need To Know

Hi everyone,

How's your day? Mine's good. The progress of my mobile phone application research has been good and we even managed to secure a quite significant amount of research funding for it to run for another 2 to 3 years, perhaps. Anyway, I have so many things to talk about but today, we are going to discuss some myths regarding exercises and how it affects people.

Exercise has been an important aspect of life if you want to stay healthy and some research even managed to conclude that people who are exercising frequently would live longer than people who lead sedentary lifestyles. It sounds simple but we do know that longevity can be influenced by a multitude of factors making it difficult to predict why people are affected by certain condition e.g. cardiovascular diseases even if they were leading a healthy lifestyle; pity.

There are several other factors which can make your life pretty much-going sideway if you messed up with them. Sleep, for example, has been an important determinant of longevity. Even if we do not consider death as the potential consequence of sleep deprivation, multiple studies have found that people who sleep less than 5 hours per day prone to get diabetes mellitus as a result of hormonal imbalance.

It's pretty cool and the reason why I decided to write myths regarding exercise is that some of them could have potentially lead to detrimental consequences instead of achieving physical, physiological and mental benefits from it. Imagine, you have been told by one of your friends that feeling pain the day after exercise is good and it indicates that your muscles are trying to adapt to the new routine. While in some cases, you can nod your head off but for the most of it (especially among enthusiasts) you might want to argue.

Let's jump into the topic and discuss, shall we? I'm going to focus on 3 myths for today and maybe next week, I will come up with others.

Lactic Acids Are Killing Me!

Well, if you took science as your major/minor subject in schools, you would know that anaerobic contraction of the muscles during exercise would lead to the formation of lactic acid which makes us feel discomfort. Even though it is conceptually true, usually, the rumor about lactic acid in exercise doesn't end there. It's well-known to all people who were working out that feeling sore after exercise sessions is quite common, especially if you were pushing your muscle to the point of failure.

People have been associating the idea of lactic acids build up with the soreness experienced by people after workout sessions, even if they experienced it for a few days. Well, if we are talking about right after the exercise, then yeah, it could be but usually, the accumulation of lactic acids would be brief unless it is caused by diseases.

After lactate (lactic acid) was formed as a result of oxygen deprivation, it would enter the Cori cycle which would convert this lactate into glucose to be used as energy sources (recycling energy sources). The thing is, during intense muscle activities, the rate of lactate entering the Cori cycle is significantly lower than after muscle activities have ceased.

This result in accumulation of lactate in the muscles causing soreness during exercise but you would realize that the soreness went away after you stop and take a breath for a few seconds. The rate of lactate entering the Cori cycle is significantly higher when we were stopping, taking a breath, allowing clearance of the lactate and the body quickly change the product of glucose metabolism as they were provided with sufficient oxygen.

To be clear, the exact cause of dull muscles pain experienced by people for a few days wasn't exactly caused by the lactate but as a result of micro tears in the muscle structure which causes some sort of delayed-onset of pain which is usually felt 1 to 2 days after strenuous activities. That's right, you were working out to the point of breaking your muscle but afraid not, this muscle would be rebuilt later to form a much bigger, perhaps stronger muscles.

The delayed onset of soreness is a well-known medical condition named as delayed-onset muscle soreness or DOMS for short. It's self-limiting and if the pain persists for a few weeks then you need to consult a doctor; it could be an injury instead of DOMS.

Pushing yourself every single day can be a good way to build a strong muscle but be smart about it. No one works on their chest 3 days in a row, those muscles need healing. Exercising for at least 3 times a week is recommended for people to lead a healthy life but you need to know that those 3 weeks should be organized in a well-distributed manner. If you exercise for 3 days straight and live the other 4 by being a sloth, then it would be useless.

In conclusion, if you feel sore for the next 2 to 3 days after working out, don't worry, it's normal. It's caused by micro-tears of your muscles, not accumulation of lactic acids. Get your facts right before relaying it to others. Be smart about how to execute your exercising schedule. People always said, no pain no gain, but in order to "gain", you do not necessarily need to be in pain. Moderation is the key; take one step at a time and someday you will reach your goals.

Stuff Yourself With Foods! You Deserved It After Working Out. Take Anything! (The You-Can-Eat-Anything Paradigm)

One of the most popular reasons to exercise is so that we can eat anything without gaining much weight. Is that true? Well, that would depend on the "anything" that you would describe in your sentence. If you want to eat more frequently a day but all of the food is good and healthy stuff in a nice portion, then, go ahead and do it. Most of us, however, try to associate the word anything with unhealthy stuff like fast foods and all, which could be detrimental to our health despite how long we were exercising.

It seems like a good choice after working out for so long, you finally would be able to eat anything that you desire. Let me tell you something, there are 3 major components of longevity which are diet, exercise, and sleep. Diet contribute the majority to your health compared to the other 2.

Think about it, some people seem to exercise frequently but they are still in the overweight/obese on the BMI scale. They are still fat and look unhealthy despite exercising and that's because exercise doesn't influence your weight. It helps but without a proper dietary planning, it would doom to fail regardless how many push up, sit up or pull up you would be able to do.

If you have problems with sleep you would notice that your appetite seems to be increased and your hormone will not be the same if compared to when you get enough sleep. You would stuff yourself with foods and eventually have an increased risk to develop type II diabetes mellitus; that's suck! Even with the most efficient and strenuous activities, you still need to plan your food consumption to ensure you take what is required and limit yourself to certain calories according to what you were trying to achieve.

Let's take an example, there are two things that people might want to achieve with diet or exercise; it's either they want to gain weight (because they were too skinny) or they want to shed that extra pounds. If they want to gain, they have to eat 500 calories more than their normal calories consumption and if they want to lose it, they have to reduce 500 calories from the equation.

No one loses or gains 5-10 kg in a matter of a week and if someone does, advise them to see a physician, they might have other medical conditions that would affect their weight gain/loss. Some people combine exercise with the paleo diet, some people go vegans and some opt for the keto diet. There are literally, hundreds of eating style that could have adopted and they are available on the internet; you just need to do some research and experiment with them to see which one suit you the best. Commit yourself to a few days of research for a lifetime of commitment.

It's not easy and even though, knowledge-wise, people knew what they have to do to cut those weights, it still difficult to do it. In a research conducted in 2008 by Samantha L Thomas et al, it was found that among 76 obese people who participate in that study, 80% of them knew they have to change their dietary habit to lose weight. Only a small percentage answer they need to exercise or combine both of them; the latter is, of course, the best way to do it.

Why do you think they thought exercise is not that important to lose weight? Well, exercise can boost the effect of dieting to lose weight but it is not something that people would recommend first when we tell someone, we want to lose weights. People who are obese were physically and emotionally reluctant to perform an exercise or join any exercise program. Physically speaking they were too lazy to move their ass off and emotionally speaking, they felt embarrassed by their physique.

It is true that compared to exercise, dieting would be much simpler. You don't need to suffer through DOMS to lose your weight but exercises were never invented for the sake of losing weight; it's to prevent diseases and complications associated with detrimental life choices that we would make. A study conducted by C. D. Reimers et al in 2012 has found that people who were exercising have an increased life expectancy compared to people who were not.

Like I said before, be smart about it. Be lean and healthy (Don't forget to get enough sleep to optimize your performances).

Take Supplements Or Those Muscles Would Never Grow!

You need to be convincing to sell your product if you are a promoter but that doesn't mean you need to lie your ass off. I mean supplements help but they weren't necessary if all of the nutrients we need can be covered in our daily meals. This is a pretty popular opinion among gym enthusiast and most of the amateur "gymmer" fall for this marketing scheme.

I'm not in any way saying that protein supplements are not working, I just implied that buying and taking supplements is a matter of choice rather than necessities. An average people like you (probably) and me (definitely) don't require that much protein per day. It's kinda confusing for most of the people as they were too many equations on the internet regarding how to calculate your protein consumption per day but I would say, just eat healthy stuff and you would be fine.

Cut that sugar if you want to lose weight, eat complex carbohydrate if you need to bulk and chug that protein if you think it works for you, doesn't matter as long as it works. For you to know this, you will need to experiment it yourself; you might waste a lot of dollars buying supplements here and there but committing yourself to your own body was never a simple task.

In a study conducted by Pasiakos SM in 2015, muscle gain would be the same for people who were taking protein and those who were not if certain training criteria weren't met for the first few weeks of weight training but as the time goes by, and the frequency, duration, and volume of resistance training went up, supplements would be able to promote muscle growth and repair. Athletes, for example, would require a high protein consumption to compensate the time and how strenuous their training program is.

Me, on the other hand, workout 4 times a week and my objectives are to stay healthy and strong so I don't need to spend 50 dollars a month, buying protein supplements or creatine to boost my performances. It's simple so don't make it complicated. You know your body better than anyone else, adjust your needs accordingly and you will see results soon enough. Your muscle would grow with or without supplements, don't worry.

References: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]

All images were taken from Pixabay

Images: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]