Exercise and activity is needed by the body to survive various events in life. While some people do not want to move their body and move around, some people prefer being active in their daily lives. Along with air, food, water, shelter, and belongingness, exercise prevents a person from being brittle, just like a rusty metal. The following are the health benefits of exercise.
Exercise Makes You Happy
One benefit of exercise is that it boosts a person’s happiness level. According to a Penn State University study, as cited by Dr. Axe’s official website, people who exercised – whether mild, moderate, or vigorous – had more pleasant feeling, as opposed to those who did not. As per the publication, the same people were also reportedly happier on days when they were more physically active than the normal. In a smartphone app experiment, it was found over three million responses a year from participants reported their happiness levels and they were at their second-happiest after workout.
Weight Management and Cardiovascular Health
Another benefit of exercise includes a correlation between weight management and cardiovascular health. According to Mayo Clinic, exercising helps prevent excess weight gain or maintain weight loss through burning calories. The publication mentioned that a person will burn more calories as the intensity of the activity increases. In this regard, exercise promotes weight loss, which allows prevention of the development of heart and blood vessel disorders like hypertension, atherosclerosis, arteriosclerosis. As per the publication, being active also boosts the person’s high-density lipoprotein or good cholesterol levels and reduces unhealthy triglycerides, which means a reduction of one’s risk of having cardiovascular disorders. While some people do not have time to go to the gym and exercise, they can perform various exercises at home. Also, they may do alternative activities like taking the stairs and doing the household chores.
Neurologic Benefits
Exercise also benefits the mind. According to Greatist, multiple trials involving mice and humans revealed that cardiovascular exercise helps promote new brain cell formation, a process called neurogenesis. As per the publication, exercise also helps improve overall brain performance; trials found that a tough workout heightens brain-derived proteins in the body, enabling the person perform well – including learning, higher thinking, and decision making. Also, regular physical activity increases a person’s memory and ability to do things. In this regard, it is said that getting sweaty allows higher cellular production in the hippocampus, which led to a correlation between children’s brain development and the level of physical fitness. For adults, a trial found that running sprints resulted to an improvement of vocabulary retention in healthy adults.
Anti-Aging
An interesting benefit of exercise for some people is its anti-aging effects. In a study involving 5,000 adults in the United States, as cited by News Week, researchers learned that those who exercised regularly were younger on a cellular level, as opposed to those who had sedentary or moderately active lifestyles. Further evidence from the journal “Preventative Medicine” revealed that those who had higher levels of physical activity had longer telomeres than those who did not have. As per the publication, telomeres shorten every time a cell divides that they become too small to protect the chromosomes. As a result, cells age and then die, which results to aging. Moreover, it is revealed that shorter telomeres are associated with various age-related diseases, which include cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and cancer, among others.
Exercise has several health benefits, such as. Thus, it is vital to include a certain type of exercise in a person’s routine to prevent deterioration of his body and his overall health.
