Exercise is defined as any movement which makes your muscles function and needs your body to burn off calories.
There are many types of physical activity, such as swimming, running, jogging, walking and dancing, to name a couple.
Being busy has been shown to have many health benefits, both physically and emotionally. It could even help you live longer.
Listed below are the top 10 ways regular exercise benefits your body and brain.
1. It Could Make You Feel Happier
Exercise has been shown to improve your mood and reduce feelings of depression, anxiety and stress.
It produces changes in the parts of the brain which regulate tension and anxiety. It can also increase brain sensitivity for those hormones serotonin and norepinephrine, which alleviate feelings of melancholy.
Additionally, exercise may raise the production of endorphins, which are known to help produce positive feelings and lower the perception of pain.
Furthermore, exercise has been shown to decrease symptoms in people suffering from anxiety. In addition, it can help them be more aware of their mental state and practice distraction in their fears.
It also doesn’t matter how extreme your workout is. It seems that your mood can benefit from exercise no matter the intensity of the physical action.
In fact, a study of 24 girls who were diagnosed with depression showed that exercise of any intensity substantially decreased feelings of melancholy.
The effects of exercise on mood are so powerful that choosing to exercise (or not) even makes a difference within short periods.
1 study asked 26 healthy women and men who normally exercised regularly to either continue exercising or quit exercising for 2 weeks. Individuals who stopped exercising increases in a negative mood.
SUMMARY:
Exercising regularly can improve your mood and reduce feelings of anxiety and depression.
2. It Can Help With Weight Loss
A number of studies have shown that childbirth is a major factor in weight gain and obesity.
To understand the effect of exercise on weight reduction, it’s very important to comprehend the association between exercise and energy expenditure.
Your entire body spends energy in 3 ways: digesting food, exercising and keeping body acts like your breathing and heartbeat.
While dieting, diminished calorie consumption will decrease your metabolic rate, which will delay weight reduction. On the contrary, regular exercise has been shown to increase your metabolic rate, which will burn more calories and help you lose weight.
Additionally, studies have demonstrated that combining aerobic exercise with resistance training can maximize fat loss and muscle mass maintenance, which is essential for keeping the weight off.
SUMMARY:
Exercise is essential for supporting fast metabolism and burning more calories every day. It also makes it possible to maintain your muscle mass and weight loss.
3. It’s Good for Your Muscles and Bones
Exercise plays an essential part in building and maintaining strong bones and muscles.
Physical activity like weight lifting can stimulate muscle building when paired with adequate protein intake.
This is because exercise helps release hormones that encourage the ability of your muscles to absorb amino acids. This helps them develop and reduces their breakdown.
As individuals age, they tend to lose muscle mass and function, which can result in accidents and disabilities. Practicing regular physical activity is essential to reducing muscle loss and maintaining strength as you age.
Additionally, exercise helps build bone density when you are younger, besides helping to prevent osteoporosis later in life.
Interestingly, high-impact exercises, such as gymnastics or running, or odd-impact sports, such as football and basketball, have been demonstrated to encourage a higher bone density than non-impact sports like swimming and cycling.
SUMMARY:
Physical activity makes it possible to build muscles and strong bones. It may also help prevent osteoporosis.
4. It Could Improve Your Energy Levels
Exercise can be a real energy booster for healthy men and women, as well as those suffering from various medical conditions.
One study found that six weeks of regular exercise decreased feelings of fatigue for 36 healthy men and women who’d reported persistent fatigue.
What’s more, exercise can considerably raise energy levels for people experiencing chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and other severe illnesses.
In reality, exercise seems to be more effective at resisting CFS than other treatments, such as passive treatments like relaxation and extending, or no treatment at all.
Furthermore, exercise has been shown to increase energy levels in people suffering from progressive illnesses, such as cancer, HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis.
SUMMARY:
Engaging in regular physical activity can increase your energy levels. This can be true even in people with chronic fatigue and people suffering from serious illnesses.
5. It Can Reduce Your Risk of Chronic Disease
Lack of regular physical activity is a key cause of chronic disease.
Regular exercise has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity, cardiovascular fitness and body composition, yet reduce blood pressure and blood glucose levels.
By comparison, a lack of regular exercise — even in the short term — can lead to significant gains in belly fat, which increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and premature death.
Thus, daily physical activity is suggested to reduce belly fat and decrease the risk of developing these diseases.
SUMMARY:
Daily physical activity is essential to maintaining a healthy weight and reducing the risk of chronic illness.
6. It Can Help Skin Health
Your skin can be impacted by the total amount of oxidative stress on your system.
Oxidative stress occurs when the body’s antioxidant defenses can’t fully fix the damage that free radicals cause cells. This may damage their inner arrangements and deteriorate skin.
Though intense and exhaustive physical activity can promote cognitive impairment, regular moderate exercise may boost the body’s production of pure antioxidants, which help protect cells.
In the same style, exercise can stimulate blood circulation and cause skin cell adaptations that could help delay the appearance of skin aging.
SUMMARY:
Moderate exercise can offer antioxidant protection and encourage blood circulation, which can protect your skin and delay signs of aging.
7. It Can Help Your Brain Health and Memory
Exercise can enhance brain function and protect memory and thinking abilities.
To start with, it increases your heart rate, which promotes the flow of oxygen and blood to your brain.
In addition, it can stimulate the production of hormones that can improve the development of cells.
Moreover, the ability of exercise to prevent chronic disease can translate into benefits for your mind, since its function may be impacted by these ailments.
Routine physical activity is especially important in older adults because aging — coupled with oxidative stress and inflammation — boosts changes in brain structure and function.
Exercise has been proven to cause the hippocampus, a part of the brain that is essential for learning and memory, to grow in proportion. This serves to boost mental function in elderly adults.
Lastly, exercise has been shown to decrease fluctuations in the brain that can cause Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.
SUMMARY:
Regular exercise improves blood circulation into the brain and helps brain health and memory. Among older adults, this helps safeguard mental function.
8. It Can Help With Comfort and Sleep Quality
Routine exercise can help you unwind and sleep better.
In regards to sleep quality, the energy depletion that occurs during exercise stimulates recuperative processes during sleep.
Moreover, the increase in body temperature that occurs during exercise is considered to enhance sleep quality by helping to drop through sleep.
Several studies on the effects of exercise have reached similar conclusions.
1 study found that 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity a week can provide as much as a 65% improvement in sleep quality.
Another demonstrated that 16 months of physical activity increased sleep quality and assisted 17 people with insomnia sleep more and more deeply than the control group. It also helped them feel more energized during the daytime.
What’s more, engaging in regular exercise seems to be beneficial for the elderly, who tend to be affected by sleep disorders.
You can be flexible with the type of exercise you select. It seems that aerobic exercise alone or aerobic exercise along with resistance training may equally assist sleep quality.
SUMMARY:
Regular physical activity, irrespective of whether it’s a mix of aerobic and resistance training, helps you sleep better and feel more energized throughout the day.
9. It Can Reduce Pain
Chronic pain can be painful, but exercise can really help reduce it.
In fact, for many decades, the recommendation for treating chronic pain was rest and inactivity. But, recent studies show that exercise helps alleviate chronic pain.
A review of many studies suggests that exercise helps individuals with chronic pain reduce their pain and improve their quality of life.
Several studies show that exercise may help control pain that is associated with various health ailments, such as chronic low back pain, fibromyalgia and chronic soft tissue shoulder disease, to name a few.
Furthermore, physical activity can also raise pain tolerance and decrease pain perception.
SUMMARY:
Exercise has positive effects on the pain that’s associated with different conditions. Additionally, it may increase pain tolerance.
10. It Could Boost a Better Sex
Exercise has been proven to improve libido.
Engaging in regular exercise may strengthen the cardiovascular system, improve blood flow, tone muscles and improve flexibility, all of which can enhance your sexual life.
Physical activity can enhance sexual performance and sexual pleasure, as well as raise the frequency of sexual activity.
A group of girls in their 40s discovered they experienced orgasms more often when they comprised more rigorous exercise, like sprints, boot camps and weight training, into their lifestyles.
Also, among a group of 178 healthy men, the guys that reported more exercise per week had greater sexual function scores.
One study found a very simple routine of a six-minute walk round the home assisted 41 men to reduce their erectile dysfunction symptoms by 71 percent.
Another study conducted in 78 sedentary men showed how 60 minutes of walking daily (three and a half days each week, on average) enhanced their sexual behavior, such as frequency, sufficient functioning and satisfaction.
What’s more, a study revealed that women suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome, and this may decrease sex drive, increased their sex drive with frequent resistance training for 16 weeks.
SUMMARY:
Exercise will help improve sexual desire, function and performance in men and women. In addition, it can help decrease the risk of erectile dysfunction in men.
The Bottom Line
Exercise offers incredible benefits that may improve nearly every aspect of your health from the inside out.
Regular physical activity can increase the production of hormones that make you feel happier and allow you to sleep better.
It can also improve your skin’s look, help you lose weight and keep it off, reduce the risk of chronic disease and enhance your sex life.
Whether you practice a particular sport or follow the guideline of 150 minutes of activity per week, you’ll inevitably improve your wellbeing in many ways.