“Why exercise? Why should I make fitness a part of my life?”
Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in our country, often related to a sedentary lifestyle. Inactivity is a “silent killer”. If you have a sedentary lifestyle, there will be a decline in your body’s ability to function. Evidence is emerging that long periods of sitting or lying down are bad for your health. The health benefits of regular exercise and physical activity are hard to ignore. Everyone benefits from exercise, regardless of age or gender.
Need more convincing to get moving? Here are 13 reasons that make the physical fitness culture something worth embracing in your life.
#1 Weight Management
In order to understand the effects of exercise on weight loss, it is important to understand the connection between exercise and energy expenditure. Regular exercise will increase your metabolic rate and help you burn more calories, reach your desired weight goal, or maintain your ideal weight. Regular exercise helps to optimize your metabolic rate, which makes weight management easy.
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#2 Combats Health Conditions and Chronic Diseases
Heart disease and stroke are two of the leading causes of death. A regular exercise regimen of moderate intensity can put you at a lower risk for these diseases. Regular physical activity can also help reduce your blood pressure and improve your cholesterol levels. Exercise boosts high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, the “good” cholesterol, and decreases unhealthy triglycerides, which reduces the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases.
Inflammation may be an underlying cause of many diseases and disorders in both body and brain. Exercise reduces many inflammatory markers, such as C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, which are linked to several diseases.
Exercise helps your pancreas to work better and makes your cells more sensitive to insulin. This improves the way your body deals with sugar and helps prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes.
#3 Strengthens Bones and Muscles
Exercise plays an important role in building strong muscles and bones. Doing muscle-strengthening activities such as weight training can help increase or maintain muscle mass and strength. As age increases, an individual tends to lose muscle mass, which can lead to a slowdown of metabolism and an increased rate of injuries. Staying physically active helps reduce this muscle loss. Regular exercise can also slow the loss of bone density that comes with age. Among older individuals, regular physical activity also reduces the risk of falling and related injuries
#4 Improves Mental Health and Reduces Stress
Stress is a daily part of life. One of the most important benefits of exercise is stress relief. Regular physical activity can help you manage mental stress. Exercise increases the concentrations of norepinephrine, a chemical that can mitigate your brain’s response to stress. Regular physical activity can improve your mood and reduce the likelihood of depression and anxiety. It also promotes the release of a mood-lifting brain chemical called serotonin and the release of endorphins that usually leave you feeling happier and more relaxed. A little physical activity will make you a little happier every day.
#5 Increase in Energy Levels
Exercising daily can help you boost your energy levels. A good exercise session causes a rush of hormones that act as a significant energy booster and helps fight fatigue to keep you more active. Exercise delivers nutrients and oxygen to your tissues and helps your cardiovascular system to function more efficiently. And when your heart and lungs health improve, you have more energy to carry out day-to-day work.
#6 Better Sleep Quality
Exercise can help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer, as it fights insomnia by ensuring you are sufficiently tired by bedtime. Exercise also helps to regulate your body’s circadian rhythm. Moreover, the elevated body temperature that occurs during physical activity is thought to improve sleep quality by helping it drop during sleep.
#7 Younger, Healthier Skin
Exercise stimulates blood flow to the skin, which helps deliver more oxygen and nutrients which in turn helps improve skin health. Sweating, which is increased by exercise, allows the body to excrete wastes via the skin’s surface. Exercise also benefits your skin by triggering the production of antioxidants. These antioxidants repair damage to the skin cells and improve skin health.
#8 Relief from Physical Pains
Chronic pain can be debilitating, but exercise can help reduce it. Several studies show that exercise can help control pain associated with various health conditions, including chronic lower back pain, fibromyalgia, and chronic soft tissue injury. The right type of exercise can be a good form of