Soleus Pushup
The Soleus muscle, often referred to as your second heart, has some pretty amazing functions. Located in your calf, the Soleus was named after the Latin Pleuronectes solea, a flat fish, that resembles it in shape.
Remarkably, the soleus muscles are the body's primary muscle pumps responsible for forcing the blood to return from the lower body up to the heart. While sitting or standing, these muscles slowly fill up with blood and once filled, they contract, pushing the blood back up. This is without you even noticing it! Pretty cool.
But a recent study revealed something even cooler. By doing a simple exercise while sitting named the Soleus Pushup (SPU), you can increase your oxidative metabolism. Oxidative metabolism is the process by which oxygen is used to burn blood sugars and fat.
Quote:
“All of the 600 muscles combined normally contribute only about 15% of the whole-body oxidative metabolism in the three hours after ingesting carbohydrate. Despite the fact that the soleus is only 1% the body weight, it is capable of raising its metabolic rate during SPU contractions to easily double, even sometimes triple, the whole-body carbohydrate oxidation.” (1)
The study showed a 52% improvement in using up the sugars in the blood and 60% less insulin requirement. The rate of fat metabolism doubled in the period between meals and reduced the total fat in the blood. Just from this simple exercise.
How to do the Soleus Pushup:
1. Sit with your feet flat on the floor.
2. Raise your heel, keeping your toes on the floor.
3. When you heel reaches it’s range of motion, release it back to the floor.
That’s it! Do this throughout the day while you are sitting. Pretty neat. Just don’t overdo it in the beginning. You don’t want to be sore the next day.
And I don’t know if this is true as it was only a comment from a youtube video and I was unable to verify it. But the person said:
”The soleus push-up idea came from a Japanese physician who experimented on himself. 5 minutes after you finish eating do 30 soleus push-ups. It was determined that when the heel bone strikes the ground a hormone is released which works with the pancreas. Many people have lost weight and regulated their blood sugars.”
But there’s more……….
The soleus muscles may play an important role in reducing age related cognitive decline. Age related cognitive decline is often correlated with reduced blood flow to the brain and between the ages of 30 to 70, blood flow to the brain can decline 30-50 percent!
Exercise helps. But the SPU, Soleus Pushup, can help even more by pushing more blood into the heart and then into the brain.
In another study (2), researchers used a mechanical stimulus to force the soleus muscle to contract for one hour daily for four months in seniors who were hypotensive. At the end of the study, these seniors had significant improvement in cognitive performance during executive function tests.
Considering how much time some of sit at our desks, this an easy, simple exercise that is also spiritually grounding. It can improve our health and make us smarter too!
Thank you for reading!
Hugs,
~Christine
(1) https://stories.uh.edu/2022-soleus-pushup/index.html
(2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5683775/
Soleus youtube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u45C0NByqF8&t=59s
