Essentials to Achieve Fitness and Healthy Body and Long Life - Research Paper Example

Fitness Proposal: The human body is a gift of God. However, this gift has certain pre-requisites attached to it and it requires proper nourishment and look after. The aforementioned conditions can be fulfilled only if proper fitness is maintained. Fitness in itself is a constituent of multiple factors and it requires ensuring those factors should be fulfilled, these factors are the physical, chemical and biological processes. Proper diet, exercise, regular and active eating habits, are few of the secrets to a fit and healthy body. Proper Nutrition: Nutrition is the set of those ingredients that are required by the living beings for proper functioning of their body. The concept of nutrition is not just limited to the products we intake, but the entire process involved which involves metabolism and catabolism at the same time. In a broader sense it involves the entire digestive system of human body. Nutrients come in a wide variety and the proteins, vitamins; minerals encompass the circle of nutrients. They are required in certain amount for ensuring the proper working of human body. While proteins and carbohydrates provide energy, vitamins are multi functional in nature and at times they are source of energy, at others they provide protection against diseases and help in healing processes in the body. Excessive fats are enemy to the human body and not only do they obstruct the mechanism of proper working of different components of the body ,they additionally pose threat in form of severe malfunctions which may result from deficiencies of several nutrients that are required by the body. The cholesterols result in an underlying surface of fats which hinder the proper working of the nutrients and other natural foods. Role of supplements in fitness: Supplements are quite common in practice for purpose of maintaining fitness and health. They are more commonly in use in areas of athletics and other activities where physical labor is desired. For long their use, and subsequent reaction and impact on the body has been questioned. Many researchers have conducted intensive research in this area to determine the possible downsides of supplements. However from a rational study and analysis of the entire study, it can be deduced that supplements are not solely bad, the manner in which they are used, determines its use and abuse. Principles of training: Training is not just limited to use of supplements, rather it involves the kind of diet, the activities undertaken( mostly training for athletes) Specificity: Many a times, body suffers due to stress induced. It occurs because of the lack of knowledge on behalf of athletes. The human body consists of areas that are relatively stronger, and those that require specific consideration while exposing them to direct training and stress. The principle of specificity enables dealing with such considerations and ensures that no sensitive tissues and bones are put under direct stress. Joints must be adapted to flexible movement in order to improve fitness and bring most out of the body. Areas of constraint in an athlete’s body are the shoulder muscles, hip muscles and the subsequent joints. For ensuring specificity, coaching and proper training is vital (Hawkins and Hawkins,pg 22). Variables of fitness and training: With lots of research and expertise obtained by the practitioners certain variables have been established as the de facto elements which if taken into account can help in maintaining fitness and proper working of the body. These variables include the frequency of occurrence. The type of exercise conducted, followed by the intensity of stress induced, and the time duration over which the exercise is performed. All these variables are equally important and weighable and none can be ignored since any of these if not taken into account can result in the body stress, and disorder and dislocation of joints (Thow, pg145). Supplements basically are set of nutrients that make up for the shortcomings which an individual might incur in his/ her body. The deficiency of these essential nutrients, especially vitamins can affect the athlete’s performance drastically. They range from vitamins, to proteins to amino acids (Dunford, Doyle et.al ,pg 18). Wide variety of vitamins, ranging from Vitamin B-2 to vitamin B-6 to vitamin B-12 are occasionally used as supplements. Large usage of supplements is seen in cases of medical healings where necessary amount of nutrients are inducted into the body. A separate industry of its manufacturers and its followers exist in the market, however the need is to determine and ensure the safety margin while using it. Federal Drug Administration has the responsibility in this regard to determine the harmful effects of respective supplements and provide the customers with sufficient information about their use and misuse. Supplements are often tagged as performance enhancers for the sporting athletes. While they provide boost in the short run, they have dire consequences on the individual body in longer run. An individual at times might not be able to determine the exact nature of the supplement, for this reason precaution is advised in their usage. The usage of supplement as for vitamins is termed safe when the RDA scale is 100 percent. The extra amounts of vitamins taken in form of supplements have shown to have affected the new born babies and their health. Vitamins if added to supplements in a controlled proportion are declared completely safe and healthy for human body. Vitamins naturally help the growth of Red Blood cells which are the basic building block of a human body. Vitamin B have an effective role towards the metabolism of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. They help towards formation of serotonin which is a neurotransmitter and is involved in relaxation. Several studies show that these vitamins improve fine motor skills. Besides, chorine which is an amine naturally found in food forms acetylcholine in the nerves, if this neurotransmitter’s amount in decreased in the body it results in fatigue. For prevention of fatigue in cases of extensive competition amongst the runners it has been proven that supplementation together with chlorine will help in restricting the growth of fatigue and will rather improve the performance. Vitamin D is effective in case of development, growth and maintenance of health and growth of bones. Vitamin C and E act serve as the antioxidants which as implicit by its name serve for preventing oxidative damage to the cells. During extensive exercise the production of oxygen species can disturb the muscle tissues. Doping Factor: Athletes are highly vulnerable to the power booster material which they might know or unknowingly inject into their bodies through the use of supplements. Such cases put them direct into the catch of anti doping authorities and large number of athletes are banned and barred from sporting activities annually on the basis of unnatural performance enhancers. Cardio vascular endurance and how it relates to fitness: Cardio vascular endurance is an important factor in fitness. It is the ability of the body to perform dynamic exercise more efficiently. With good cardiovascular fitness one is able to perform more prolonged exercises with little fatigue. Those who exercise regularly will have stronger heart muscles and are far less likely to develop chronic heart disease, heart attacks and strokes. Cardiovascular and respiratory system works together. Lungs supply the oxygen which is carried by blood to the actively exercising muscles and other parts of the body. With the right exercises the heart muscles get stronger so that it is able to pump blood more efficiently to our muscles in the case of increased demand during strenuous exercises. A normal person has a heart beat rate of 70 beats, while an athlete has a heart rate of about relatively lower than that. This shows that the pumping efficiency of people who exercise regularly is more. They have more stroke volume (the amount of blood pumped) per beat, so the work load on heart is less and they perform better (Hoffman, pg 110). People who are physically fit can respond better to exercise than the people who are not physically fit. They can substantially improve their metabolic rates as the work load increases, are better able to cope with the lactic acid produced and can provide their muscles more efficiently with the increased energy demand imposed on them. Moreover their respiratory response is better as well. They do not go out of breath or suffer from air suffocation. Cardiovascular endurance exercises helps the body to regulate blood pressure at a more stable level this prevents development of heart diseases (Lawrence, pg3). It also decreases the amount of bad cholesterol in the body and increase the beneficial cholesterol. It helps in prevention of blockage of arteries due to excessive accumulation of fats in them.Regular exercise allows the formation of more capillaries in muscles, this not only provide them with more nutrients from blood but also encourages healing and lessen body aches. Hence, these essentials if considered can help achieving fitness and healthy body and in other sense longer life. References: 1-Dunford, Marie, Andy Doyle and J. Andrew Doyle. Nutrition for Sport and Exercise. Cengage Learning, 2011. 2-Hawkins, Jerald D. and Sandra M. Hawkins. Walking for Fun and Fitness. Cengage Learning, 2011. 3-Hoffman, Jay. Physiological Aspects of Sport Training and Performance. Human Kinetics, 2002. 4-Lawrence, Debbie. The Complete Guide to Exercise to Music. A&C Black, 2009. 5-Thow, Morag. Exercise Leadership in Cardiac Rehabilitation for High Risk Groups: An Evidence-Based Approach. John Wiley & Sons, 2009. Read More