Did You Know? - 5 Prominent Health Benefits of Exercise

It’s long been known that exercise is beneficial for health. The problem is that we are so lazy that we hardly feel like moving our behind from place A to place B, not to mention our disinterest in vigorous activities. Can the tremendous health benefits motivate us to get finally engaged regularly into exercise? Earth’s Wisdom thinks so, and so here are some of those benefits that have good chances to trigger your mind to start moving, walking, running, jumping and hopping.

1. Exercise Brings about Weight Loss

It’s well-known that inactivity is a major cause of weight gain and obesity. Why weight is lost with exercise can be understood with the connection between being active and energy expenditure.

Understand that our body uses up energy in 3 ways:

1. Food digestion
2. Maintenance of body functions such as breathing and heartbeat
3. Exercise

If you starve yourself while dieting, your lowered calorie intake will reduce your metabolic rate, eventually delaying the weight loss process. On the other hand, regular exercise has been shown by a number of studies to increase metabolism due to which more calories are burned and weight is reduced.

2. Exercise Makes You Happy

Lazybones won’t believe that exercise can make one happy, but it’s true. If you are constantly feeling depressed and uninterested in life, try to be physically active and you’ll be surprised to see yourself feeling less depressed and sad.

This is because exercise can bring changes in those parts of the brain that control stress and anxiety. Even brain sensitivity for the hormones norepinephrine and serotonin is increased due to exercise. These two hormones relive depression.

Endorphins, compounds that promote positive feelings in us and decrease the perception of pain, can be activated due to exercise.

The good news here is that your mood elevation is not connected to the intensity of exercise. You just have to exercise; you don’t need to run for 2 hours and play tennis for an hour every day. Merely walking for half an hour and a light exercise like yoga for another half an hour is enough to keep you happy. A study on 24 women suffering from depression showed reduced feelings of depression in them with exercise of any intensity.

3. Exercise Increases Energy Levels

Exercise can boost energy levels in healthy people and also in people with various health issues.

A study done on 36 healthy people experiencing fatigue constantly showed reduced fatigue with 6 weeks of exercise. 

In people with CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) and similar illnesses, exercise has shown remarkably increased energy levels.

4. Exercise Strengthens Bones and Muscles

Exercise such as weight lifting when combined with sufficient protein intake can promote muscle building. It’s because exercise promotes the release of hormones that increase the ability of muscles to use amino acids which helps them grow and decreases their breakdown.

With age, people tend to lose muscle mass as well as function and undergo disabilities and injuries. Exercising regularly is essential to reduce muscle loss and maintain their strength as you age.

Even bone density is increased with exercise in your young age, besides prevention of osteoporosis in the old age. High-impact exercises like running, gymnastics, basketball or soccer have been found to build higher bone density than non-impact activities such as cycling and swimming.

5. Exercise Improves the Health of All Organs

With exercise, your brain, skin and all other organs become healthy, your pain is reduced, your sleep quality is improved, so you are better relaxed, and your sex life is improved too. All this is because exercise increases blood circulation due to which blood flow to every organ is improved thereby improving supply of nutrition to every organ. Further, exercise increases the natural production of antioxidants in the body due to which all the cells are protected from oxidative stress (free radicals).

So, if by now, you were taking pride in resting and relaxing, get up and start exercising – it will introduce you to a healthy you!

Also in Wisdom News