Smart Strength is Westlake Hill’s only provider of Medical Exercise. Briefly: medical exercise is prescribed by Certified Exercise Physiologists for individuals with medically controlled diseases. With nearly 50% of the population suffering from some form of chronic disease, the advanced training and expertise required to administer medical exercise is more important than ever before.

 

At Smart Strength, we have clients with a range of conditions (just take a look at our testimonials!) for whom we’ve significantly improved their quality of life. As such, this blog post is the first of 4 that outlines the most common conditions we work with: cardiometabolic disease, arthritis, diabetes, and osteoporosis.

 

Cardiometabolic Disease

Heart disease is the number one killer in America, be in acute myocardial infarction or slow painful death due to congestive heart failure. Improving cardiometabolic disease risk factors requires both lifestyle changes (dietary patterns and stress reduction, namely) and prudent exercise interventions.

 

Resistance training has a track record of improving these risk factors to a similar or greater degree than steady-state, low-intensity training. Specifically:

  • Resistance training improves cardiovascular function by increasing the amount of blood returned to the heart with each stroke. The more blood that goes into the heart, the more blood leaves the heart with each stroke. This is extremely important for those with heart failure or a pacemaker, as heart rate needs to be kept at a relatively low level during training.
  • Resistance training improves HDL levels, thus improving your blood lipid profile and reducing your risk profile.
  • Resistance training improves cardiovascular efficiency. When you are stronger, any task you perform is easier, so your heart works less hard to supply blood to the working muscle. This is especially important for individuals with heart failure.
  • Resistance training reduces blood pressure to a clinically significant degree, also reducing your risk factor profile.

 

These are just a few of the cardiometabolic benefits of resistance training. If you’re suffering from one of the chronic cardiometabolic diseases that plague our country, now is the time to sign up for a free consultation to see how Smart Strength can drastically improve your quality of life.