Exercise refers to any movement that makes your muscles work and burn calories. Any amount of exercise provides many benefits to your mental and physical health. There are different types of physical activity, including running, swimming, walking, jogging, dancing, cycling, gardening, climbing stairs, and many more.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, anyone can benefit from exercise regardless of their health, ethnicity, age, abilities, size, or size weight. The good thing about exercise is that it can help you fight 40 chronic diseases and help you live longer.
In the article below, we are going to look at the benefits of exercise for your physical and mental health.
Contents
- 0.1 1. Exercise Reduces the Risk of Chronic Diseases
- 0.2 2. Improves Cardiovascular Health
- 0.3 3. Exercise improves mood, reduces stress, anxiety, and depression
- 0.4 3. It is good for weight management
- 0.5 4. Exercise is good for muscles and bones
- 0.6 5. Boosts your Energy Levels
- 0.7 6. Reduces risk of some cancers
- 0.8 7. Improves your skin health
- 0.9 8. Exercise helps with relaxation and sleep quality
- 0.10 9. Reduces risk of dementia and improves brain function
- 0.11 10. Exercise improves your sex life
- 1 Wrapping Up
1. Exercise Reduces the Risk of Chronic Diseases
Not being active is one of the primary causes of chronic disease. Exercising helps improve your heart health, improve insulin sensitivity, and body composition. Besides, it is an easy way to reduce cholesterol and blood pressure levels.
Still, lack of exercise increases the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes which can be life-threatening if left untreated. Therefore, add exercise in your daily routine to decrease the risk of developing chronic conditions.
2. Improves Cardiovascular Health
Cardiovascular health refers to the health of your blood vessels and heart. Currently, experts have revealed that cardiovascular disease accounts for up to 31% of deaths in form of coronary heart disease. Some of the benefits of exercise for heart health include:
- Lowering blood pressure
- Improving good cholesterol levels
- Reduces your risk of stroke
- Preventing and reducing the risk of heart disease and heart attacks
To improve your cardiovascular health, you should aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week and increase the intensity as time goes.
3. Exercise improves mood, reduces stress, anxiety, and depression
Exercise is a better way to improve your mood and reduce the feelings of depression, stress, and anxiety. It increases your brain’s sensitivity for norepinephrine and serotonin hormones, which help relieve the feelings of depression. Besides, exercising increase the production of endorphins, which help reduce the perception of pain and produce positive feelings.
No matter how intense or moderate your exercise is, your mood benefits from exercise. So, adding exercise to your routine will help you reduce stress and have positive feelings every time.
3. It is good for weight management
Physical inactivity is a major factor that leads to weight gain and obesity. If you are looking to lose weight or maintain a healthy body weight, both diet and exercise play a vital role. The basic foundation of weight loss is burning more calories than you can consume. Furthermore, exercise increases your metabolic rate, which helps burn more calories.
The best way to lose weight is combining aerobic with resistance training to increase fat loss and muscle maintenance. To maintain a healthy weight, you will need to have both exercise and a healthy eating plan.
4. Exercise is good for muscles and bones
Exercise is an important activity that helps you build and maintain strong muscles and bones. As you age, it is important to protect your muscles, bones, and joints because they support your body. Doing muscle-strengthening, aerobic, and bone-strengthening exercises at a moderate to intense can help slow loss of bone density that comes with age.
Exercise supports the release of hormones that promote amino acids absorption. Moreover, starting exercising at an early age can prevent osteoporosis later in life.
For instance, talk of hip fracture. Hip fracture is a life-threatening condition with life-changing effects, especially on older adults. Active individuals have a lower risk of hip fracture than inactive people.
Therefore, exercises, such as brisk walking, running, jumping jacks, strength training, and weightlifting are some exercises that can help you build strong muscles and bones.
5. Boosts your Energy Levels
If you have been feeling tired lately and a dip in your energy levels, exercise can help you. Exercise is a good energy booster, especially for individuals with medical conditions. There is a strong relation between exercise and energy.
Exercise helps the body produce more mitochondria that help create fuel out of glucose, and the more mitochondria you have, there will be increased energy supply. Furthermore, exercise leads to an increase in oxygen in the body.
With enough oxygen supply in the body, the body will function effectively and use energy efficiently.
6. Reduces risk of some cancers
Being physically active reduces your risk of developing some cancers. Recent research shows that being inactive puts you at risk of cancers, such as:
- Stomach
- Colon
- Breast
- Esophageal
- Bladder
- Breast
- Uterine
- Kidney
- Uterine
If you are a cancer survivor, you can get regular physical activity to improve your life and physical fitness.
7. Improves your skin health
The amount of oxidative stress in the body affects the skin. As you exercise, more oxygen and nutrients are delivered to the skin, promoting collagen production and promote growth of new skin cells. Furthermore, blood flow during exercise helps carry away all the waste products and promote a healthy skin.
Moderate exercise increases the production of natural antioxidants which protect cells and slow skin aging.
8. Exercise helps with relaxation and sleep quality
Working out might increase your sleep quality and help you feel well relaxed. The energy depleted during exercise is recovered during sleep. Furthermore, an increase in body temperature during exercise helps improve sleep quality as the body cools during sleep.
For adults and individuals affected by sleep disorders, exercise can be a good way to increase sleep quality. For instance, aerobic exercise alone or combined with resistance training can help improve sleep quality.
However, you should not do complicated exercises or workouts before bed time because this can affect your sleeping pattern, sleep quality, or provoke nighttime awakenings.
9. Reduces risk of dementia and improves brain function
When we sleep, the body and brain stay active. This is the time brain cells shrink and allow for more space between brain cells so that substances and toxins can be flushed out.
Exercise is a good way to improve your thinking skills, brain function, and protect the memory. First, exercise increases the heartrate, promoting flow of oxygen-rich blood and nutrients to the brain. Other than that, it enhances the production of hormones that facilitate the growth of brain cells.
Most physically individuals over 50 years have improved brain function and their risk for dementia and cognitive impairment is low.
Therefore, exercise will improve blood flow to the brain and improve your brain health.
10. Exercise improves your sex life
According to recent studies, exercise has been shown to boost sex drive and arousal. Exercise helps improve blood flow, tone muscles, strengthen the heart, and enhance flexibility, all needed for better sex. Besides, exercise can help improve sexual performance and pleasure while increasing the frequency of sexual activity.
In women, exercise increases sexual arousal and sexual well-being. Furthermore, being physically active makes you feel more desirable and it decreases the risk of erectile dysfunction in men.
Some exercises that can increase your sex drive include:
- Kegel exercise
- Swimming
- High intensity interval training HIIT
- Weightlifting (this exercises encourages the body to produce more testosterone).
Wrapping Up
Overall, exercise provides many benefits that improve your physical and mental health. No matter whom you are, exercise benefits everyone. All you need is determination and hard work. Remember, no pain, no gain.
Whether you will decide to practice a specific sport or follow a guideline of 75 or 150 minutes, you will improve your health in multiple ways. Even when you don’t meet the recommended weekly activity levels, the first small steps will benefit you as you progress.