Your Legs Your Life – The Importance of a Healthy Lower Half – Research on Aging
Here is a lecture on the leg health, and how the state of your legs affect the rest of your body.
We are living longer. The question is are we living healthier? Or are we living longer, but incapacitated by one or more chronic conditions?
As with the theme of this blog, the theme of this lecture deals with the aging, and in particular, how the health of our legs affect the way we age; and how our overall physical health affect the condition of our legs. You can say it’s a chicken-and-egg situation, but can we do anything about it?
My firm belief is that we can keep healthy for life. All we need to have is knowledge about how our bodies work.
The doctor, Professor M.A. Allison MD, covers 3 conditions that affect leg health and the medical procedures that help alleviate the symptoms:
- Peripheral Arterial Disease: where flow of blood into the legs are restricted due to plague in arteries.
- Chronic Venous Disease: where vein valves are compromised, leading to back flow of blood in the legs.
- Peripheral Neuropathy: where blood flow to the nerves are restricted or blocked, causing nerves to die.
There are also other ailments affecting legs that are not mentioned in this lecture, and that includes: gout and osteoporosis.
The conditions are related to the health of the vascular system (arteries and veins) in the legs. Poor vascular health is the result of poor lifestyle habits over time.
It may seem like poor health conditions as these are an inevitable consequence of aging, but that is not entirely true. Yes, we develop these symptoms as we get older, BUT the problems start at a very young age.
Keeping Our Legs Healthy
The largest muscles in our body lie below the waist. We use our legs for mobility, and that mobility offers us the exercise we need to maintain good cardiovascular health.
Read this: The Power of Walking an Hour a Day : More than Weight Loss
Tissues and cells within muscles, bones and skin within the legs need efficient blood supply — inflow of oxygenated blood via the arteries, and outflow of deoxygenated blood via the veins . When the flow of blood gets restricted, the use of our legs become limited; we walk less and become less mobile.
Vascular health is directly related to lifestyle. Smoking, sedentary lifestyle, drug use, and poor diet choices are known factors that lead to higher risk of developing aging related diseases.
Practicing good lifestyle habits is a sure way of maintaining healthy legs.
And what is good lifestyle?
Read these articles:
Forever Young Forever Fit Diet Tips
Reverse the Effects of Aging: 9 Effective Things You Can Do Right Now