As you have aged, you may have noticed you are taking more sick days. You may catch the flu and colds more easily than you did when you were younger. Also, it is probably taking you longer to recover these days.
It is common for the average man or woman over 50 to catch 2 to 4 more colds yearly than someone between ages 20 and 40. Many times this can escalate into sinusitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, or worse. Seniors make up more than 60% of the annual 36,000 flu related deaths. Long waits, inaccurate formulas, and shortages means that you cannot rely on a vaccine to protect you.
To prevent becoming one of those statistics, you need to boost your immune health. Fitness over 50 is the best natural way to improve your immune system. In fact, many fitness experts recommend bodybuilding as a preferred method to improve both your overall health and increase your immune system.
Bodybuilding increases muscle mass which promotes immune health in many ways. Muscle burns more calories than fat and helps prevent weight gain. Doctors have found that overweight people have poor immune health and get sick more frequently. Bodybuilding boosts your circulation, which strengthens your heart and lungs. It also thickens blood vessels. This means that it is easier for antibodies and nutrients to travel through your body to fight colds, flu, infections, and other ailments. This means that you are able to resist illness and can recover more quickly.
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.
However, bodybuilders using low intensity training often dramatically reduce their number of sick days annually. Typically this is because their training cycle has adequate time for improvements and total body renewal, including your immune system. As you age, you will need more time for rest and renewal. Therefore, you might want to start with a 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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