Everyone knows that exercise is good for you, but it’s actually an unbelievable health booster. There are dozens of conditions that regular exercise is able to play a part in healing. Not to mention, it also provides anti-aging benefits to your body and mind. Staying active on a regular basis may be a challenging habit to get into, but the benefits are innumerable. Recent reviews of research have shown that choosing to move your body regularly is one of the most powerful things you can do for your health. The conditions that exercise can help heal range from cancer to strokes to dementia and even depression.
What About Weight Loss?
When considering exercise, weight loss is one of the first things that comes to mind. Of course, working out on a regular basis can incite weight loss, but that’s one of the least impressive of its potential benefits. Exercising offers benefits to everyone and protects against disease, whether or not you’re interested in losing weight.
Exercise and Anti-Aging
One of the most amazing benefits of regular exercise is anti-aging properties. Staying active can actually reverse and slow down the natural process of aging. The best part is that these benefits can be achieved even if you start exercising later in life.
On a cellular level, humans age due to the breaking down of telomeres. In our DNA, telomeres are strands at the ends of our chromosomes that protect them. As we age, telomeres shorten, and our cells begin to die which can also cause disease. Scientists are well aware that these telomeres are the key to aging, and keeping them long for as long as possible helps to keep us young. There is plenty of research going on about ways to keep telomeres long, but there’s one really simple solution- exercise. Exercise has been related to slowing the degradation of telomeres!
What Are Some Other Benefits of Exercise?
Anti-aging is not the only benefit to regular exercise and physical activity. In fact, the list of possible benefits is quite extensive. Take a look:
- Lowering blood pressure: Physical activity makes your heart beat faster, strengthening the vital muscle. A stronger heart is better able to pump blood, which allows your heart to pump more blood with less effort.
- Improving IQ and brain power: With the strengthening of your heart, more blood pumps and more oxygen reaches your brain. Plus, an array of hormones is released during exercise that boosts intelligence and memory.
- Fighting depression and low moods: Other hormones like dopamine, serotonin, and adrenaline are released during exercise which helps to boost your mood and keep it regulated for longer periods of time.
- Lowering the risk of some diseases: The combination of all these benefits results in a lower risk of getting diseases, especially diabetes and heart disease. These are two common diseases that are significantly less of a risk for those with good blood pressure and lower blood sugar levels. It also helps boost the circulation of immune cells all throughout your body, meaning that your immune system becomes more efficient overall.
How to Achieve the Benefits of Exercise?
There are many ways to increase the benefits you’re gleaning from exercise. Doing something is better than doing nothing, but it’s also important to keep in mind what kind of exercise you’re doing and how often. It’s vital to do challenging exercises and do them on a regular basis. You gain many more results and benefits from working out a few times a week compared to once a month. Do a variety of exercises and physical activity, not just what you’re comfortable with. Be sure to include cardio, strength training, stretching, and a wide variety of other challenging workouts. Don’t make the mistake of doing the same thing for hours on end- it’s much more effective to do smaller increments of different types of physical activity.
Why Not Just Do Cardio?
Getting the benefits of exercise, including all the weight loss and disease-fighting, is much easier with a combination of different activities rather than just sticking to cardio. Traditional aerobics and cardio exercises are not bad, but adding high-intensity workouts to your routine significantly raises the effectiveness. High-intensity workouts help to bring your heart rate up as high as it will go for short periods of time. This helps to unlock your body and brain’s capabilities faster and boost your metabolism. Doing these types of exercises also boost your body’s production of human growth hormone, one of the most important substances in your body. HGH helps in the biological aging process and helps you stay strong and healthy.
Finding the Time to Exercise
Even knowing about all these benefits, many people don’t regularly exercise. It’s difficult to find the time in our busy lives to stay active and get our heart rates up. However, exercise is just as important to our lives and health as our other daily activities. Making a little bit of time for exercise has plenty of benefits, and it’s definitely worth fitting into your schedule. It doesn’t take too much time for regular exercise to become something you look forward to as you begin to feel its amazing effects. It’s never too late to start an exercise regimen, and it should be a top priority throughout your entire life. Exercise is a powerful tool that we all have access to.
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