Aging and Earth Gravity As I've been taking care of the elderly patients day in day out for years, one of the routine lectures to them is as follows. "We are all earthlings, earth-bound, earth gravity bound creatures. We don't feel earth gravity when we are young and active. However, sooner or later aging process or long illness would conspire with earth gravity to make us feel the earth gravity 24 hours a day.
The definition of physical fitness by doing aerobic exercise is basically an effort to free ourselves from the earth gravity. Certainly you will feel much freer and energetic if you are on the moon which has less than one third of earth gravity.
As we enter 50's, our body needs 3 or 4 good exercise sessions a week to maintain a reasonable freedom from the earth gravity. In 60's perhaps we need to do it 5 or 6 times a week. In 70's we need to do exercise once or twice a day depending on our endurance. In 80's we probably need to do it two to 4 times a day again depending on our endurance. In 90's we need to get up to move around every 15 min to 30 min during waking hours with or without a cane or a walker.
If we stop fighting the earth gravity conspiring with the aging process, the earth will certainly make sure that it will bury us sooner. Besides walking or biking at various speed and strain, swimming or water aerobic exercise does help us fighting the earth gravity by partially neutralizing it so that we don't tax or strain our joints and spines as much, which gives us less aches and pains and help us saving the invaluable vanishing joint cartiliges and spine discs." The above is the essence of my lecture to each elderly patient I encounter in the office. Now I have to eat every word I've been saying to the patients as I became one of them.
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aerobic exercises (which increases blood flow to the brain as much as 5 times) was
considered to be the most important preventive measure against Alzheimer's disease or dementia.
Aerobic exercises in young people in 20's and other normal adults as well as in people with cognitive
impairment all showed measurable improvements in their cognitive performances.