The health aspects of the practice of fitness.

By Dr. Marco Martone

In this editorial I will talk about the benefits that can be had in terms of health and greater well-being from the constant practice of weight training. I believe, in fact, it is important that you all know that the investment of time, money and physical effort, which is spent weeks after weeks, is not only necessary for the aesthetic result such as having bigger muscles or a low percentage of fat, the main reason for to which we devote ourselves to this discipline, but on the contrary you must know that you will also derive better health from it and that you are already doing much in the primary prevention of many diseases linked to a sedentary lifestyle.

The life style of the classic and strictly natural bodybuilder (without the help of any doping substance) is certainly a model from which to draw inspiration if you care about your health. Starting from the basic notions of bodybuilding we see why the observation of the basic rules leads to benefits that go beyond the aesthetic result only. A self-respecting bodybuilder trains regularly on an annual basis and leaving aside the various training philosophies that are beyond the scope of this editorial, the mere fact of lifting weights presupposes that you subject your body to beneficial stimuli. More and more people, in fact, fall ill with the negative "well-being" that modern society gives us every day: SEDENTARITY. I am a deep lover of anthropology and I can tell you in complete safety that never as in the modern era has the genus homo become sedentary and this unnatural state is certainly not congenial to our body. The main cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in the last 30 years have undergone a rapid surge and, except for precise congenital and genetic correlations, most of them are attributable to hypokinesia (little movement). Simply our body is the result of millions of years of evolution, certainly marked by different eras, but a common denominator to all past generations is that much more movement was made. For example, the search for food of our ancestors as the first hominids was closely correlated with the skill in hunting, just as in the age of agriculture people worked hard in the fields for several hours a day. Today we order our spending sitting at a computer, you can't find the difference?

I like to say in this regard that our time spent in the gym more than a luxury is, and must become, a forced choice to make up for the lack of movement.

Let us now turn to food. Here too our good model bodybuilder knows that if he wants results he must attach great importance to how he eats. The first thing he does is eliminate the junk foods that are increasingly present and unfortunately more and more publicized at all hours of the day, such as to make a real brainwashing of the most important resource of the future of our society: children. I don't know about you, but I have not yet seen a single advertising message, during the programs most followed by our children, which reads the antioxidant properties of fruit and vegetables, on the contrary I only see advertising products of low nutritional value, rich in hydrogenated fats ( read poison) and refined sugars (poison straps) that can only result in overweight and / or increasingly obese children. Where is our Ministry of Health that should protect us? Bah, maybe there are too many economic interests at stake and as always we are the ones who are involved. Fortunately, people who do any physical activity begin to understand that nutrition is a key point for achieving results. Bodybuilders then are very meticulous in choosing and hiring food: they eat relatively low-fat foods such as white meat and fish; they make regular use of vegetables and fruit and know the importance of healthy fats such as extra virgin olive oil. Even the fact of making more daily meals, instead of the normal 3 or very often even just two, is a smart choice that avoids introducing in a few meals all the load of calories that in the long run creates harmful effects on the metabolism such as resistance to insulin. I think it is clear that movement and proper nutrition today are necessary in order not to run into relatively young pathologies such as diabetes, heart attack, ischemia, stroke, osteoporosis etc. Doing healthy bodybuilding today must not only mean showing muscle, but also, and perhaps above all, investing in one's own health. The bodybuilding natural with the addition of a targeted cardiorespiratory work perhaps, in spite of other noble sports, read swimming, is truly complete. In fact, it includes both anaerobic and aerobic work, gives the bones a fair load to prevent chronic weakening (osteoporosis) and the icing on the cake aims to obtain a very low percentage of body fat, which already alone ensures the removal of many metabolic pathologies. So the next time you raise a handlebar or barbell, don't just look at it with a "weight", but know that you are moving away from you: a modern malaise that makes more victims and / or injured people than any war.