The Truth of Fitness and Aging

Overview

Recent technological “advances” in the span of a few decades have fundamentally altered people’s occupational and lifestyle habits. Approximately one-third of the world’s population does not meet the minimum criteria of physical activity to maintain safety. Although, exercise programs can be seen as an active “compensation” strategy for the lack of routine physical activity.

The rapid socioeconomic and demographic change, the need to take advantage of the natural dimension has led to a diversification of the application of physical exercise /sport that it poses itself today with different goals and with the study of different forms of satisfaction. Awareness increasing, that exercise improves the quality of life, has driven more people to perform physical activity. These have evolved over the years, resulting in several studies based on recommendations for exercise treatment, resistance training models for healthy adults, system parameters and core learning concepts and new disciplines.

There are various descriptions of fitness, ranging from being able to carry out daily activities with vigor, to displaying the characteristics and capacities that are associated with a low risk of premature development of hypo kinetic diseases (those associated with physical inactivity)

Definitions

Physical Activity: is defined as any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that require energy expenditure.

Exercise: is defined as “a specific type of physical activity that is planned, structured and repeatedly done to improve or maintain physical fitness.

Physical fitness: A set of attributes that people have or achieve that relates to the ability to perform physical activity

Physical fitness ‘ health related components are (a) cardiorespiratory endurance, (b) muscle  endurance, (c) muscle strength, (d) body composition and (e) flexibility.

Physical Fitness

Reaction time
Power
Speed
Coordination
Balance
Agility
Flexibility
Body composition
Muscular strength
Muscular endurance
Cardio Respiratory Endurance
Skill related fitness
Health related fitness

Anatomy of veins

Veins are easily grouped as superficial or deep but they are widely interconnected; there are valves in both types that are abundant in deep veins. The superficial veins are near to the body’s surface, i.e. they are subcutaneous in the superficial fascia; they are used to differentiate veins far from the surface, known as deep veins.

Structurally, young healthy veins consist of three distinct media layers: a thin internal layer of smooth muscle cells, a dense middle layer consisting of bundles of smooth muscle cells divided by collagen and elastic fibres, and an outer intermediate layer not often clearly defining the boundaries between media and adventitia. Aged veins exhibit subintimal fibrous thickening, fibrosis of the three media layers, reduced elastic tissue, increased cross – linking of collagen, and smooth muscle cell hyperplasia.

Veiny arms:

If physiological stress, such as exercise and heat exposure, occurs, the venous system needs  to adjust to this new situation and typically does so by adjusting venous adherence, which could promote the transfer of blood from vein to heart and enable us to retain central blood  volume and blood pressure.

Most people lead an active lifestyle that seeks to lose body fat for cosmetic and performance reasons with minimal muscle loss. Competitors of different aesthetic and/or weight class sports are an extreme example of these individuals. These fat loss plans are very common and shown in the media on a regular basis in the same way as diets for obese.

Causes for veiny arms

1. Increased blood pressure: As you exercise your blood pressure rises to satisfy the need for more blood in your body. This allows your veins to dilate, enhance vein  structure, especially during high intensity workouts.
2. High stress levels: Veiny arms can be a sign of stress in your body due to your workout or daily routine. Increased stress levels can cause vascularity due to higher stress  hormone cortisol  levels
3. Genetics: Some people have translucent skin, which makes their veins more visible, particularly if they have worked out.
4. Aging: When we age, in addition to ultraviolet (UV) light exposure (or extrinsic aging), changes occur at all stages of hand anatomy. Thin and lentigine epidermis, acitinic keratoses (AK) and seborrheic keratoses (SK), general dyschromia, and textured roughness arise.The quality and quantity of collagen and elastin in the dermis decreases, and the regeneration potential decreases.Often popular is capillary fragility with its associated bruising, which is caused primarily by UV light damage to capillary walls. \Fat atrophy makes the tendons and bony prominences more visible in the subcutis and makes the veins appear to be booming.
5. Varicose veins: Varicose veins are distorted, swollen veins close to the skin surface which formed mostly in the legs and ankles. Varicose veins are often primary (affecting only the superficial veins), often arising from congenital or family predisposition resulting in the loss of the vein wall’s elasticity. Secondary varicosities arise when the valves are weakened by injury, obstruction or inflammation (which affects the deep veins)
6. Hot weather: The cause is sometimes as simple as high temperatures, which makes it more difficult for your veins to work efficiently.
7. Phlebetis: The veins may be inflamed by injury, illness or autoimmune disease
8. Vascular diseases: Blood and lymph vessel malfunction can block the flow of blood and cause deep vein thrombosis or peripheral vascular disease. If this occurs in your hand or arm, swelling and compressing in your hands around blood and lymph vessels may cause elevated veins.

Veins popping out

This helps to understand the vascular system and its components to clarify the importance of veins during exercise. Blood flowing throughout the body is pumped from the heart’s left ventricle. It first reaches the high-pressure arteries where systolic blood pressure, the maximum pressure exerted there, is measured at about 120 mm Hg (millimeters of mercury), and diastolic pressure is recorded at about 80 mm Hg, the lowest pressure exerted in these vessels. (This is indicative of normal blood pressure around 120/80 mm Hg.)

The blood flows into arteries called arterioles, smaller and smaller branches. As it progresses, the pressure reduces because of the resistance of the arterioles ‘ walls themselves. Then the blood enters the capillaries, the smallest blood vessels, which provide nourishment to healthy cells and remove waste material. In the human body there are over one billion of these and they are very small and thin. The blood pressure when reaching the capillaries is around 30 mm Hg.

The pressure further reduces as the blood finishes its nutrient tasks and then leaves the capillaries flowing back to the heart through the smallest veins — the venules. The venules join into larger and larger veins before they flow as the vena cava into the heart’s right atrium. By the time blood reaches the largest arteries, the blood stream’s pressure is only a few mm Hg, and its return to the heart is driven at muscle activity and breathing more than its own inherent strength.

As exercise begins, the heart rate and contraction force increases and blood is pumped into the arteries rapidly. During high intensity aerobic exercise, systolic blood pressure rises linearly with exercise intensity, increasing to almost 200 mm Hg (and to more than 400 mm Hg during weight lifting). On the other hand, diastolic pressure changes very little with aerobic pressure.

At the same time, in a process called vasoconstriction, the inner diameters of veins  and venules decrease, restricting the blood flow to the heart and increasing its ability to receive blood from the capillaries.Generally, this method helps to reduce the pressure of a peak of about five mm Hg in the venules and veins.

It decreases venous size and pressure and is therefore not the basis of bulging. Alternatively, the mechanism that occurs in the capillaries as a result of increased blood pressure during exercise allows plasma fluid to be pushed out through the thin vessel walls and into compartments surrounding the muscles normally resting in these tiny tributaries.

This method, known as filtration, causes the muscle to swell and harden when exercising. Cutaneous veins are pulled towards the skin surface as a result of this swelling, flatten to some extent, and tend to bulge. For people with less subcutaneous fat, these veins are more visible.

How to achieve more prominent veins in your arms?

Need to develop muscle mass, lose body fat, and get your blood pumping cardio

1. Increase muscle mass: High intensity weight lifting allows your muscles to  expand, in turn causing your veins to push towards the skin’s surface and pop out more. To improve vascularity, you ought to lift the weight above our neck.
2. Reduce overall body fat: If you have less body fat under the skin that coats  your muscle, your veins will be more visible
3. Include cardio:Doing loads of aerobic exercises will help you build endurance,loosen excess weight and improve circulation, all of which will help you  achieve veiny arms
4. Diet: Adopt a healthy diet that helps us to lose weight by holding a calorie  deficit and eating plenty of muscle-building foods
5. Blood flow restricting training: When lifting weight, using blood flow  restricting cuffs or bands to increase pressure on your arteries, BF-RT increases vascularity and helps you to develop more strength.

Are veiny arm indication for fitness?

Bulgy veins are not always a positive health indicator certain causes such as anxiety and high blood pressure need to be omitted. Such bulging is neither good nor bad, but merely a result of normal physiological processes arising from increased blood pressure during exertion.

Treatment options for protruberant hand veins include

• Liquid sclerotherapy strategies— a treatment in which the physician injects a chemical solution into the veins, causing the vein to swell and close, minimizing its size,
• Endovenous laser ablations— in which amplified radio or light waves close smaller veins. Or less often
• Ambulatory phlebectomy: hook unwanted hand veins avulsion

View points

Evidence has shown that it has positive effects on the human body to exercise and improve health. The benefits of regular physical activity can provide a strong basis for a healthy future life in children and adolescents. This physiological state is important for the prevention of different diseases such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and the main cardiovascular disease in particular. In addition to having a high fitness level; even a normal job helps to make life easier in general. Even in the elderly, there are reported advantages of increased levels of fitness.Regular physical activity and a healthy lifestyle can help people to be “healthy.”Thus resulting in fitness and efficiency is the evolution of society in optimizing productivity and increasing implementation time: we can see this in the large number of high-intensity protocols that have been developed.The evidence of this progression are examples such as HIIT, cross-fit, boot camp preparation, functional training exercises and many more. Society’s desires and desire to improve wellness and promote positive lifestyles make exercise a pivot around which everything revolves. Exercise and age, but for different reasons, may cause the veins in your hands to bulge. The bulging veins are probably natural in either situation.