The Importance of Physical Fitness

Regular physical activity is one of the most important things you can do for your health. It helps with many things such as weight control, strengthens muscle and bones, improves mental health and mood, increases ability to do daily activities and prevent falls. Exercise also increases your chances of living longer by reducing your risk for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and some cancers. The benefits of regular exercise and physical fitness are endless.

Checking Physical Fitness Levels

At Alternative Health Care Center, our doctors use a physical fitness assessment, which includes an exercise test, blood test and health survey, to determine your physical fitness level. The exercise test includes push-ups to check upper body strength, squats to check lower body strength, planks to check core strength and a mile walk/run to check cardiovascular strength. The blood test includes a blood sugar and lipid panel to assess the biochemical aspect of your physical fitness level. The health survey is a questionnaire that gives us information about your lifestyle choices that may be affecting your physical fitness level. Once the physical fitness assessment is done, our doctors score the assessment, which takes into account the age and gender for each patient.

Increasing Physical Fitness

Once our doctors have established your personal physical fitness level, the doctors will advise you on which exercise programs may improve your score depending on your age, gender and physical fitness level. Our doctors have many different options for patients when starting their plans. We may refer you to a local gym which we have partnered with so that you have access to the correct equipment. Patients have the option to select workouts from a portal containing a list of appropriate workouts to do at home. We can also create personalized weekly/monthly workout programs.