Dizzy During Exercise

From: WebMD News

Answer: There are many reasons for dizziness and nausea during exercise. Heart problems, interactions with medications, a virus, or any other number of factors could cause it. If the following reasons don't apply, then you need to contact your doctor.

Here are some possibilities:

1. It's possible that your blood pressure may be dropping during the workout, particularly if you rapidly change posture from lying or sitting to standing, or if you do a heavy squat, or you do a heavy leg press and then stand up. Also, if you do a vigorous aerobic workout like bike, treadmill, or elliptical trainer, and then don't cool down enough before getting right to the weight training, that can cause dizziness.

Any time blood shunts to your legs during heavy exertion, and then you rapidly change posture, you risk the blood pooling in your legs, and without it circulating back to the brain, you get dizzy. This can happen in conditioned as well as deconditioned individuals. Standing still in the shower after a workout can also cause it for the same blood pooling reason.

One of the risks of blood pooling in your legs is passing out. Of course, this would be particularly bad in the shower on a tile floor. If this is the problem, it will probably get better as you get more fit, but for now you should walk around and cool down until your heart rate returns to within 20-30 beats of resting and your legs feel strong. You should also change posture slowly (for example, get up from the floor or a bench slowly). And make sure you walk around and are totally cooled down before showering. If you feel dizzy in the gym and walking around doesn't solve it, then you need to sit down or lie down.

2. The problem could be from lack of food. For instance, if you work out in the morning, without having breakfast, and it's been 10-12 hours without a meal, then you can easily get dizzy from lack of fuel. You need, at least, to eat a snack if it's been several hours since you've eaten before a workout. Half a bagel, a banana, oatmeal, or toast 30-45 minutes before the workout should help. You'll have to see what works best.

3. If you have been sedentary for years and then get started quickly, you may need to take it a bit slower until your body gets used to it. Fitness will happen, but people need to pace themselves. Vigorous exercise in deconditioned people often leads to dizziness or nausea. Overtraining and lack of warm up can also cause it. Again, if none of the above help, or the problem continues, then you need to contact your doctor.

By Abigail Trafford, Washington Post Staff Writer

Teddy Roosevelt started it--charging up San Juan Hill, charging around the White House, charging out into the wilderness of Yosemite Park and down the rapids on Brazil's River of Doubt. The rough-riding trust-buster was the first in this century to make physical fitness a signature of his presidency.

He even went swimming in Rock Creek Park in February. As he described it: "We did the usual climbing stunts at the various rocks, and then swam in the creek; and it was a good swim, in our winter clothes and with hobnail boots and the icy current running really fast."

No other president was such a glutton for physical punishment. Yet many of them have set the pace on physical fitness for the rest of the country. Clinton jogs and plays golf. Bush jogged, played tennis, and was so enamored of the game of horseshoes, he had a special court installed on the White House grounds. Ronald Reagan, like his predecessors earlier in the century, was a horseback rider. For John Kennedy, touch football was a family affair
to show the "vitae" of a young administration.

Calvin Coolidge was perhaps ahead of his time on home exercise equipment: He worked out on a mechanical horse, making Silent Cal a forerunner of the Urban Cowboy. (He also took a nap every afternoon in the White House.) Herbert Hoover, who lived to be 90, made his staff play a volleyball-type game with a 10-pound medicine ball, dubbed "Hooverball."

In Teddy Roosevelt's era, derring-do physical activity was about strength and wielding "a big stick," according to a traveling exhibit of presidential fitness sponsored in part by the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. The exploits of T.R. helped show the world how strong the United States had become as a new player on the international stage.
Today, as the guidelines of the President's Council make clear, the focus is on more moderate physical activity and on showing the country how important regular exercise is to health. The government's message on physical fitness may have become gentler, but it is no less fanatic on the importance of daily exercise.

"We need a sea change in our thinking similar to the change in thinking that occurred with tobacco," says Jeffrey P. Koplan, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Diet and physical activity, he stresses, are major public health issues, especially in the face of the nation's spreading waistline. "It's easy to toss this off as
frivolous and trendy. It's not."

Concern that the population is getting out of shape is not new. Throughout the century, administrations worried that the nation was going soft. As Woodrow Wilson's physician, Cary T. Grayson, opined in 1919: "If the present universal use of automobiles and elevators is continued, we may expect our great-great-great-grandchildren to be born without legs."

What is new in the current fitness movement is accumulating research linking inactivity with increased risks of some diseases and disability. For many Americans who struggle with their body shape, the presidents help serve as an example of the role physical exercise can play in daily life.

First, the presidents dispel the myth that physical activity is only for those who are born athletes. In fact, some presidents turned to exercise to overcome physical weaknesses. Teddy Roosevelt, a sickly child who suffered from asthma, boasted on the campaign trail that he achieved his heartiness through a vigorous bodybuilding effort.

Other presidents used physical activity to help them manage a chronic disease or recover from illness or injury. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was disabled by polio, turned to swimming. After Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack, his physician prescribed a regimen of walking and physical activity to get back his strength. Playing golf became associated with cardiac rehabilitation.

When Bill Clinton injured his knee, he, too, got the exercise treatment. The Baby Boom president underwent several grueling months of physical therapy and special exercises in the White House to regain his mobility. Not all the presidents, of course, were practitioners of a puritan lifestyle. Harry Truman, for one, smoked cigars--but he also rose at 5:30 a.m. and usually walked a couple of miles before breakfast.

Certainly some presidents would not score so well on the current Body MassIndex test, designed to measure physical fitness based on weight and fat composition. William Howard Taft, for example, topped the scales at 330pounds and was the butt of who-got-stuck-in-the-bathtub jokes. Yet he was an avid golfer, rode horses and started the presidential ritual of throwing out the ball at the first baseball game of the season.

And sometimes, the appearance of physical activity has masked a severe medical problem. In the case of Woodrow Wilson, a fitness regimen of exercise and diet was substituted for needed medical attention. Wilson, who had always been sickly, was diagnosed with heart disease before becoming
president. But Grayson, his physician in the White House, was a firm believer in exercise and diet as a cure-all. According to "Medical Cover-ups in the White House," by physician Edward B. MacMahon and Leonard Curry, Grayson's prescription was a program of golf and horseback riding for Wilson, who began to look and feel better under the doctor's tutelage.

Meanwhile, Wilson's heart disease and high blood pressure began to take their toll. Grayson believed the president's worsening symptoms would disappear "in the face of a regimen of outdoor exercise, diet and plenty of rest and relaxation," write MacMahon and Curry. "Grayson's simplistic yet forcefully expressed view of medicine fed Wilson's growing denial of his own illness."

Wilson succumbed to a debilitating stroke at a time when the rest of the world looked to the U.S. for leadership in the aftermath of World War I. Physical fitness and presidential fitness have long been linked in the public mind. The general take-home message from the White House has always promoted regular physical activity for the citizenry and many of the presidents illustrate the benefits of exercise.

NOTE: Dr. Jerry Hunter, Chancellor, North Orange County Community College District regularly workouts at the Virginia Schoepe Wellness Center.

American's aren't just piling on the extra pounds, they're piling them on faster and younger than ever before. A new report shows twice as many people were obese in 1999 than in the early 1960s, and people born in 1964 became obese up to 28% faster than those born only seven years earlier.

"Our study clarifies who is at risk for obesity, identifies an age when this risk is particularly high, and looks at how excess weight develops over time," says study author Kathleen M. McTigue, MD, MPH, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in a news release.