"I have to exercise an hour a day, every single day, or things just don't work right." ~A 55-year old woman in my Pilates class who had the body of an 19-year-old
Good circulation - no, great circulation - is the key to anti-aging optimal health and beauty.
You can eat foods and take vitamins and sip herbs until the cows come home but if your circulation isn't terrific, it just won't be delivered to the organs.
If your blood isn't carrying away waste and cell division byproducts at a quick pace - as fast as it did when you were a kid - cell renewal won't happen as fast as it did when you were a kid.
Circulation drives everything else. The doctors say "your production of this and that slows down." "Your body's ability to do this and that slows down." What has REALLY slowed down underneath it all? Circulation. Your heart and lungs.
A naturalist has said that exercise can make up for a host of abuses. What he was saying is good circulation can make up for a host of abuses - and there are other ways besides exercise to boost circulation. In fact, every therapy this naturalist suggests for curing anything involves increasing circulation to the area. So why doesn't he just come out and say: boost your circulation every day and you won't have to do these things because you won't be sick?
It just makes sense: If we want to have bodies that heal and are resilient like kids, we need to get our circulation and hearts working like they did when we were kids.
Circulation carries away dead cells and waste products from past cell divisions and that's what what stimulates new cell formation. Circulation is also what feeds your living cells by bringing blood that carries the nutrients to all your parts.
If it's not cleaning up at a fast pace, things will get clogged up, bogged down, and will stop working - like a dirty engine. LIttle problems become big problems until we're calling them "disease" and then ... well... I'm not going to say it's too late because it isn't! We can start now to get that working well again!
If you have diminished sex drive or hormone imbalances or eyesight problems or memory loss or organ disorders, hair loss or hair thinning, skin problems or age spots or dry skin - even wrinkles and aging, sagging facial skin -even cancer and auto-immune diseases, all these things can be improved, and many can be fixed, with a mammoth effort at drastically improving circulation. In fact, I now believe - and wish I'd figured out when my father had cancer and before he died:
The degree of improvement of your body condition - whatever it is - will be directly related to the time you spend keeping your circulation up to speed.
Sensitivity of the skin is a great indicator of general circulation because it is the last place blood goes. You've probably seen people who have slow-healing or non-healing sores on their faces or bodies. That's a direct result of poor circulation. When you see that, you can bet that's going on everywhere, inside and out. When you can scratch and injure your skin and it doesn't hurt, that skin isn't renewing and those nerve endings aren't getting fed. Sensitivity to touch and sensations will increase, slow-healing wounds will start to heal and you will start to feel as good as you did when you were young once you start to pay attention to circulation daily.
Ways to improve circulation :
Massage
Exercise 20 minutes to an hour without stopping - stretching, aerobic, weight-lifting -- break a sweat and get out of breath!
Walks and activities outdoors - long ones or a lot of short ones - 1 to 2 hours outside! This gives circulating blood potent clean oxygen,
Steam baths and saunas followed by cool showers - leaving to shower and cool off as necessary to do the time. A study showed that saunas improve circulation by improving the ability to dilate of blood vessels and veins, indicating this thermal therapy could also slow the development of hardening of the arteries, atherosclerosis (Journal of the American College of Cardiology, October 2001 - 15 minutes of dry heat sauna followed by 30 minutes under blankets.).
Hot baths (whirlpools, tub baths at 102 - 110 degrees Farenheit) for speeding up circulation and perspiration to eliminate poisons. Follow with a quick cold splash or they'll ennervate you and actually slow circulation.
Serious stretching to get rid of kinks that are impeding or obstructing circulation
Regular and thorough exfoliation of the skin so the circulation can do its job and eliminate the stuff it's trying to eliminate through sweat. Dead old skin impedes perspiration that a good circulation should stimulate. See How to Use Steam Baths and Hammams Properly
Herbs and foods to a lesser degree, like cayenne, ginger, gingko... etc.
Meditation, prayer, relaxation to untense muscles. Tensed muscles and tight muscles restrict the flow of everything, it's the reason "negative thinking" is bad for your health. An effort to relax, meditate or pray will reverse that and allow blood to flow. This may be one of the biggest actions that meditating twice a day provides.
Brushing entire body to exfoliate and get rid of skin that's clogging pores so you can sweat and that helps circulation. This also stimulates circulation in and of itself. It's easy in the tub.
Think positive thoughts!
All of these things speed up the circulation but after some hours of sitting it will slow down again, so you have to make your circulation a new priority. Adding another 10 minutes here and another 10 minutes there and maybe a walk or steam bath or hot brushing bath at night will help a lot more.
Ideas for doing more than just an aerobics class:
Try a brisk after-dinner walk, as Rose Kennedy did
A massage once a week, as so many stars always have
A dry/wet brushing once a week like the naturalists do at home
Cold water soaks, like Paul Newman did. He soaked his face in a sink with cold water and used a snorkel. That circulation boost may have been one of the reasons for his clear eyes!
Join the Y or a gym so you can get a sauna or steam bath
Use a timer to take 5-10- minute runs throughout the day.
Jack LaLane is in his 90's and gets up at something like 5am every day to lift weights and exercise. Get this: he says it's hard for him to leave his sweet wife at that hour. This man is living! This is how I want to be at 90! :-)
Warnings: blocked arteries and decaying organs do not cause pain until at the point of failure. Women who experience unattributable pain in the jaw or joints might consider, among the possibilities which today often include auto-immune disease, artery problems since it is now known that women have different warning signals of a heart attack than a man.
Any exercise program should be undertaken gradually, and you might want to eat less fats and dairy products and up those foods, like fruits and vegetables, to keep the viscosity of your blood nice and thin - and not sticky.
Soilandhealth.org points out: "Even highly trained athletes who ignore proper dietary habits acquire unsuspected heart disease and some of them perish from it."
