Time to Completely Rethink Rest and Rhythm

Amazing new research has been released that should flip the fitness world upside down. In June, at the exercise physiology conference in Finland, researchers involved in a joint study from Harvard and Columbia Universities concluded that rest, recovery and the body's natural variable rhythms are more important to fitness conditioning than previously considered.

The study entitled, Implementation of a Novel Cyclic Exercise Protocol: Short Term Impact on Healthy Adult Women, indicates that short (60-seconds or less), intense aerobic activity, followed by complete aerobic recovery, has positive effects on health. In fact, only 60 minutes of cyclic exercise per month can profoundly improve health. This finding challenges many assumptions laced within the teaching of aerobic instruction and completely inverts long-standing beliefs about exercise.

Less is not only more when it comes to health and exercise, but the more flexibility your heart rate exhibits between beats (known as heart rate variability), the healthier. Heart rate variability is the measure of change in the heart's beat-to-beat rate. The more monotonous the heart rate, the lower the heart rate variability. The 1994 Framingham Heart Study identifies increased heart rate variability (HRV) as the only common factor associated with all healthy individuals.

Eleven women, ages 32 to 58, followed an exercise protocol consisting of short bursts of exercise, paired with complete recovery on either mini-tramps or stationary bikes. Participants did the "Cycles" in sets of four to seven, three times a week, for eight weeks. They increased their heart rates to individualized target rates, always in less than one minute and completely recovered before starting another cycle. The incredible news is over the eight-week study period, no participant exercised more than a combined total of two hours. At the end of the study period, the women exhibited significant improvements in their cardiovascular fitness, heart rate variability and mood. In addition, the women demonstrated strengthened immune systems and lowered diastolic blood pressure.

"This study is exciting because it presents the first evidence that a novel cyclic protocol designed to train both the activation and recovery phases of exercise may increase cardiovascular fitness, heart rate variability and enhance mood in healthy subjects," said Ary Goldberg, M.D., a principle investigator, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and director of the H.A. Rey Laboratory for Nonlinear Dynamics in Medicine.

In other research, I found noteworthy information about exercising in accordance with one's natural circadian rhythms. Evidently, following this method does not overtax the body's natural cycles of metabolic dips, blood-pressure peaks and valleys. This study seems to support this theory since the protocol was designed to leverage the natural rhythms that organize all biological protocol trains--both exertion and recovery. Thus, we are recognizing that recovery is an active biological process and not simply the absence of exercise. The cycles were performed at varying times of day, capitalizing on the fact that our bodies are at different levels throughout the day. This program is the first to put into practice the new understanding that variability is the key to healthy biological systems.

The cyclic exercise regimen used in the study is based on a program developed by Irving Dardik, M.D.. He spent 15 years developing the cyclic exercise program and this study marks the first time it has been tested in a clinical setting. "Heart rate variability is a key measurement of the body's rhythms," says Dardik, co-author of the study and director of the Dardik Institute. "The body's rhythm controls the body's biochemistry, which determines one's degree of health. The Cycles protocol allows individuals to control their overall health [by] controlling their body's rhythms."

The study was funded by grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, VHA Inc., a nationwide network of 2,200 leading community-owned health care organizations and their affiliated physicians, the Fetzer Institute, the Kimmel Foundation and LifeWaves International. For more information call (877) 4MYWAVE.

Love,

Peg

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