Dr. Guyton provides some amazing insight into this issue: "One of the most fascinating things about endothelial cells is their role in determining the diameter to which arteries will grow. In the 1930's it was observed, by making windows in eggs to look through a microscope at developing chicken embryos, that tiny arteries with a lot of blood flow would grow, while those with sluggish or no blood flow would wither away. It has since been proven that the rate of blood flow determines the size to which an artery will grow.
This even occurs in adult animals. If a leg is cut off in an accident, then the artery supplying the stump will wither down to a small size. On the other hand, when a surgeon creates a fistula, that is, a direct artery-to-vein connection, in the forearm of a kidney dialysis patient, then the artery supplying the fistula will actually grow in diameter over a number of months. This is due to the very high rate of blood flow in the fistula and its supplying artery."
Why exercise and what is the correct exercise? Most of us thought exercise was only about losing weight. Well yes, that's important but the over riding issue for those of us interested in disease reversal is described above by Dr. Guyton. Through misuse and neglect we have scarred and hardened the blood vessels carrying our blood supplies through-out our bodies.
We can't reverse the scarring however clinical evidence indicates that we can make our blood vessels younger acting by allowing the smooth muscles to heal, we can effectively enlarge the vessels by emptying the lipid rich cores with HDL blood flow and we can effectively expand our vessels by promoting growth via improved blood flow as described above.
Correct exercise is done daily by taking, at least, a 30 minute brisk walk. The keys are daily and brisk. This level of moderate exercise is enough to change the body messages from a sedate body to an active body which is good. I walk routinely daily for 3 miles at 3.1 miles per hour on a treadmill so I average about 21 miles per week. I have learned not to go faster or I get an injury.
I also plug this into my daily routine and I do all my work on a treadmill therefore no weather excuses. You can view a record of my weight loss. Feel free to download the Ecel Spreadsheet and use this model to begin your record. I am not a great exerciser but I can walk forever and watch TV or a movie. In the last several years I have watched some pretty bad movies but that's OK; the miles still pile up for me. You may be able to craft a different program and that's fine, just get in the required number of time and intensity. One hour per day is probably the optimum amount of time.