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Here’s the painful truth:

As you become older, you are virtually guaranteed to experience some of the below modern lifestyle-related health problems unless you take aggressive preventive steps.

1) Cardiovascular issues (heart disease and stroke)

Cardiovascular disease can refer to a number of conditions: heart disease, heart failure, stroke, heart attack etc. All these can lead to serious, fatal complications if undetected and unattended to. The American Heart Association states that more than one in three adult men have some form of cardiovascular disease. Risk factors include high blood cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and smoking habits.

2) Overweight / Obesity

Being overweight isn’t just a disease, but a pre-cursor to many other medical conditions mentioned here. Overweight and obesity are defined as having higher amount of fats than normal. A body mass index (BMI) over 25 is considered overweight, and over 30 is obese.  As we become older, our metabolism drops, we eat more and we move less, hence aggravating the problem.

3) Cancer

On average, one in three people in Singapore will be diagnosed with cancer some time in their life time, and about one in four deaths in Singapore are caused by cancer. Some cancers that most often affect men are lung, colorectal, prostate, liver etc and women are breast, colorectal, cervical, ovarian, endometrial, etc.

4) Diabetes

If left untreated, diabetes can lead to nerve and kidney damage, heart disease and stroke, and even vision problems such as blindness. Men with diabetes also face a risk of lower testosterone levels and sexual impotence. This in turn can lead to increased depression or anxiety disorder. Type 2 diabetes is the most common type of diabetes. and occurs most often in middle-aged to older people. The causes include overweight, inactivity, age, and other chronic health problems like high blood pressure.

5a) Low testosterone (men)

Testosterone is a sex hormone that plays important roles in the body. In men, it regulates sex drive (libido), bone mass, fat distribution, muscle mass, strength, risk-taking behaviors etc. In short, it is what makes a man, a man. Testosterone declines naturally in most men starting around the age of 30 and drops by about 1% yearly. It can get even worse due to factors like medications (eg antidepressant drug, statin etc), chemotherapy, alcohol abuse, lack of exercise, stress, diabetes, overweight, injuries, or other reasons.

5b) Fatigue syndrome (women)

Many middle-aged women start to develop perpetual tiredness. One would usually blame it on being busy or being older. The real culprits may include underlying problems such as perimenopausal hormonal fluctuations, nutrient deficiency (eg iron or B12), cardiovascular disease, sleep disorder or thyroid issue.

6) Mental health issue: Depression and suicide

Middle-aged people often suffer mental health conditions that include: Depression, Anxiety Disorder and specific phobias, Post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), Suicide attempts, and Eating Disorders.

7) Reduction in Bone Density (women)

As we grow older, we start to lose bone density mass. Left unchecked, this could lead to a condition called Osteopenia or Osteoporosis, aka porous bone, and is more serious. This condition often cause fractures in the hip, wrist, and spine areas. Women who are past menopausal age, are at the highest risk. Strategies to prevent or reverse this includes a healthy diet and doing weight-bearing exercise by building up the bone density.

One thing leads to another

As you can see, most of the above-mentioned diseases are interlinked – one can lead to another. And that is very frightening. Not taking aggressive preventive, proactive measures or taking the wrong steps to reverse the situation will send you on a downward spiral quickly.

More bad news.

Besides physical and emotional pain, one more thing that adds salt to the wound – financial pain. The costs of managing chronic diseases in Singapore is one of the highest in the world. For example, 3rd or 4th stage cancer treatments can cost an individual a whopping $100-200k yearly! These treatments look more frightening than the diseases themselves!

(source: https://smartwealth.sg/cost-cancer-treatment-singapore/).

And even more bad news..

The likelihood of having more than one disease is very high since these risk factors are interlinked, hence chalking up even more bills.

If you are wise and lucky and did your due diligence by purchasing adequate critical illness and health insurance coverage, then good for you. This would help to relieve some of the hefty medical cost. Unfortunately, if you have been diagnosed by doctor to have a health condition, then you may be excluded or declined for medical coverages.

Please do not undermine a simple health issue such as having high cholesterol, as this may adversely lead to heart diseases or fatty liver, which may place you in the substandard category by any insurance company.

Little wonder people always commented “one can die in Singapore but can never fall sick”. 

Now the good news – you can do something about it.

No matter what health issues you may have now, you can take command of your well-being by taking appropriate, preventive and proactive measures today.

The decision is yours.

All the above stated diseases and conditions are lifestyle related; hence can potentially be prevented and even reversed without medical intervention, if attended to in the initial stages. 

A well-designed exercise program can help you manage the symptoms and improve your overall health status hence preventing it from further deterioration. For examples:

1. Aerobic exercise such as jogging can help improve your cardiovascular health, endurance and aid in weight loss. 
2. Strength training can improve muscle strength and muscular endurance, making it easier to perform daily activities, slow down disease-related decline in muscle strength and provide stability to the joints.
3. Flexibility exercises may help you achieve optimal range of motions at your joints, thus preventing injuries.
4. Interval training. Recent studies have shown that interval training is often tolerated well in people with heart disease, and it can produce significant benefits. For people with high blood pressure, exercise can lower your risk of dying of heart disease and lower the risk of heart disease progressing.  For people with Diabetes, interval training can help insulin to more effectively lower your blood sugar level. 

You can even reverse your age. Here’s science.

In addition to fixing diseases, doing regular exercises have proven to be the real fountain of youth. 

Exercising not only make you look younger, it really makes you young. This is achieved by turning off the aging process in your chromosomes. In order to stay young, you have to keep your cells young. Researchers have found that by doing exercise, it really keeps our DNA healthy and young. 

Telomeres, the caps at the end of our chromosomes that are responsible for aging, get shorter as we get older. Recent studies have shown a link between regular exercise and lengthening of the telomeres, which means you can really slow our clocks down and help us live longer.

As we become older, our metabolism slows down, we gain weight and expose ourselves to issues mentioned earlier.

The more muscle mass we have, the quicker our bodies burn calories. So by exercising and keeping your body strong, we are better able to maintain a healthy weight and reduce our chances of sicknesses and diseases.

Many studies also show that exercise boosts the size of the hippocampus, which is the area of the brain that is responsible for memory and learning. Those who exercise may literally have the brain of a younger person, making it easy for them to continue learning and maintaining sharp mental health for years longer than those who live sedentary lifestyles.

Ok, I get it. Can I just go out and run now, everyday? Or do Yoga or Pilates? And become really healthy.

Not so simple.

While all exercises are beneficial, in one way or another, not all exercise programs and diets are designed to fix your issues. A badly designed exercise routine, example those found on YouTube, a poorly executed exercise or a wrong diet without a fundamental understanding of your personal medical issues may do more harm than good.

You may end up being mal-nutritious, having compromised immunity, damaging your heart, worsening of arthritis (wear and tear), getting muscle tissues damaged, and/or experiencing extreme fatigue. It is not unusual to read about people who are seriously injured and even die  from doing exercises on their own accord. A simple run or cycle or following hyped-up programs meant for the young highly fit people may not suit you.

Understanding your body systems and doing the right exercises are critical to address all health issues.

Our body have several different systems working together:

• cardiovascular

• pulmonary,

• metabolic,

• immunological,

• neurological,

• muscular/skeletal etc.

Different diseases fall under different systems. 

Diabetes is metabolic disease, while cancer is a immunological disease. Heart disease is a cardiovascular disease. Ideally, you should be training all the systems in order to have an all-round protection against all possible diseases. Unfortunately most exercises work to improve one or two systems. Therefore, you need to commit certain regular weekly time to do different exercises to cater to different systems in your body.

Based on above, you need to do different exercise for roughly 6 to 7 days a week for at least 2 or 3 hours each time! Seriously?

What if there’s a way to train just 2 or 3 times x 50 – 60mins a week that can address all the systems?

Not only is it possible, but has been practiced by yours truly for more than 40 years, and used by my many many clients for over 25 years. All these have resulted in terrific health-related transformation results within weeks. I’m talking about things like increased testosterone, lowered blood pressure, reduced blood sugar, improved stamina, weight loss, and more, all from doing 2 or 3 weekly exercise sessions and following a personalized diet.

‘Less Training, More Results’ is what I preach and practice. To do that, I utilize a powerful scientific method called ‘SYNERGY’ 

Synergy is an interaction or cooperation giving rise to a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts.

That is, 1 + 1 = 3 (or more)

In the natural world, synergistic phenomena can be ranging from

• physics (for example, the different combinations of quarks that produce protons and neutrons) to

• chemistry (eg water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen)

If used in a business application, synergy means that teamwork will produce an overall better result than if each person within the group were working toward the same goal individually.

Synergy in fitness context: 2 major synergies at work

1. the synergy between nutrition and exercise

2. the synergy within exercises

Nutrition and Exercise Synergy

There are many studies on the independent effects of diet and exercise on chronic diseases. But new science have proven that exercise and nutrition can work together in preventing and treating diseases, and improving fitness much better due to synergistic effect.

For instance, for weight loss:

• just by doing exercise may make you lose 1 kg a month. 

• just by nutrition program, you can also lose 2 kg a month.

• by adopting a combination of diet and exercise, you can lose 5kg a month!

Exercise Synergy

Most exercise programs out there lacked the synergistic effect in them because they work on individual system / muscle group independently.

However, our body is a complex one unit machinery. It doesn’t separate itself into parts so it doesn’t make sense to work them separately. So I have modified exercises to allow us to work on two or more muscles and/or systems, and the end result becomes more powerful than training them alone.

In the examples of yoga, running and weight training, they all worked the different systems independently.

But if you could combine them into one, using modification of exercise movements, you not only achieve all the benefits of three exercises, plus many other added benefits.

But very few people understand this powerful concept because people tend to think in parts rather than ‘system’, which is how synergy works.

In gyms, people often do leg extensions to strengthen the leg muscle, but only ONE pathetic muscle is involved: quadriceps (thigh muscles) while the rest of body are left to idle. This exercise has zero synergistic value and can potentially hurting the knees because of the pivoting force acting at the joints.