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Know About Immune System Health Over 50 and Bodybuilding

You may have recently noticed you are taking more sick days. You probably are contracting colds and the flu more easily these days than when you were younger. It also may be taking you longer to recover these days.

It is common for the average man or woman over 50 to catch 2 to 4 more colds yearly than someone between ages 20 and 40. Many times this can escalate into sinusitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, or worse. Seniors make up more than 60% of the annual 36,000 flu related deaths. Long waits, inaccurate formulas, and shortages means that you cannot rely on a vaccine to protect you.

If you do not want to become one of these statistics, it is important that you boost your immune system. Fitness over 50 is one of the best natural ways to improve your immune health. In fact, many fitness experts recommend bodybuilding as a method to improve your overall health and increase your immune system.

Bodybuilding builds muscle and this helps your immune system on several levels. Muscle burns more calories than fat, therefore it prevents weight gain. Doctors know that people who are overweight are more likely to have poor immune health and get sick. Also, bodybuilding improves blood circulation. It strengthens your heart and lungs, but it also helps build up vessel walls. This makes it easier for nutrients and antibodies to easily travel throughout your body fighting colds, flu, infection, and many other ailments. This means that you can more easily resist colds and flu and you can get well sooner.

You must get adequate rest to support bodybuilding over 50 and improve your immune system. Opponents of bodybuilding will claim that it can lower your immune system. Actually, overtraining is what risks your immune health and the health of your total body. If you perform a high intensity training program with a short cycle time, you are not giving your body adequate rest. You will be more likely to get sick with a longer recovery. This is because a short cycle forces the body to focus on muscle building and ignore the immune system.

Bodybuilders using low intensity training have the opposite experience and substantially decrease their number of sick days each year. This is because their training schedule allows for both muscle improvement and total body renewal, including your immune system. When you get older, you require more time for rest and renewal. It is ideal for you to have a longer training cycle that includes one day of rest to each day of training.

It is also important that you have a diet that both supports your bodybuilding goals and promotes immune health. You will want to eat plenty of proteins and complex carbohydrates to compliment your training. Also, make sure you include antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals in your diet or through supplements to give your body an extra boost during training.

No one can totally avoid ever catching a cold or flu. However, you can control how often you suffer and the length of your recovery. If you are over 50 catching the common cold can have serious repercussions. If you want to stay healthy throughout cold and flu season, now is the time to start focusing on fitness.

For more information on bodybuilding over 50, don’t forget to check out Scott Fishers authoritative website in the previously mentioned link. Scott Fisher writes regularly on topics related to fitness over 50.