Health Benefits of Exercise & Workout

Exercise is any movement that makes your muscles work and needs your body to burn calories.

There are various kinds of physical activity, including swimming, jogging, running, walking, and dancing, to name a few.

Being physically active has several health benefits, both physically and mentally. 

Here are some of the top ways regular exercise benefits your body and the brain.

1. Exercise can make you feel happier

Exercise has been shown to improve your mood and reduce feelings of depression, stress and anxiety.

It produces changes in some parts of the brain that regulate anxiety and stress. It can also increase brain sensitivity to the hormones serotonin and norepinephrine, which provides relief from feelings of depression.

Exercise can also increase the production of endorphins, which help to produce positive feelings and decrease the perception of pain.

2. Exercise can help with weight loss

Some studies have shown that inactivity is a major factor leading to weight gain and obesity.

To understand the impact of exercise on weight loss, it is necessary to understand the link between exercise and the spending of energy.

Energy is spent by your body in three different ways:

• digesting food
• exercising
• maintaining certain body functions, like your heartbeat and breathing

While dieting, a lower calorie intake will reduce your metabolic rate, which can temporarily delay weight loss. On the contrary, regular exercise increases your metabolic rate, which in turn burns more calories to help you lose weight.

3. Exercise is best for muscles and bones

Exercise plays a key role in building and maintaining strong bones and muscles.

Activities like weightlifting can help stimulate muscle building when paired with proper protein intake.

This is because exercise helps to release hormones that boost your muscles’ ability to absorb amino acids which helps them grow and lower their breakdown.

Exercise also helps build bone density at a younger age, in addition to helping prevent osteoporosis later in life.

4. Exercise can raise your energy levels

Exercise can be a good energy booster for most people, including those with various medical issues.

Exercise can also significantly increase energy levels for people dealing with chronic fatigue syndrome and other health issues.

In fact, exercise seems to be much more effective at combating CFS than any other treatments, including passive therapies like relaxation and stretching.

Aerobic exercise boosts the cardiovascular system and enhances lung health, which can significantly help with more energy levels.

Also, exercise has been shown to raise energy levels in people with other health conditions, such as cancer

5. Exercise can minimise your risk of chronic disease

Lack of physical activity is a leading cause of chronic disease.

Regular exercise has been shown to boost insulin sensitivity, heart health, and body composition. It also helps to lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

More specifically, exercise can help reduce or prevent the following chronic health conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, hypertension, and many types of cancer.

In contrast, a lack of regular exercise can cause significant increases in belly fat, which may increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

6. Exercise for skin health

Your skin can be impacted by the amount of oxidative stress in your body.

Oxidative stress happens when the body’s antioxidant defences cannot repair the cell damage completely caused by compounds known as free radicals. This can damage the structure of the cells and negatively affect your skin.

Even though intense and exhaustive physical activity can contribute to oxidative damage, regular moderate exercise can actually raise your body’s production of natural antioxidants, which help guard the cells.

Additionally, exercise can stimulate blood flow and induce skin cell adaptations that can help delay the appearance of skin ageing.

7. Exercise helps better brain health and memory

Exercise can help to improve your brain function and protect memory and thinking skills.

It increases your heart rate, which enhances the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain. It can also stimulate the production of hormones that improves the growth of brain cells.

Regular physical activity is very important especially in older adults since ageing — combined with oxidative stress and inflammation — boosts changes in brain structure and function.

Exercise has been shown to cause the hippocampus, a part of the brain that’s necessary for memory and learning, to grow in size, which may help enhance mental function in older adults.

8. Exercise can help with sleep quality

Regular easy exercise can help you relax well and sleep better.

With regard to sleep quality, the energy loss that happens during exercise stimulates restorative processes during sleep.

Moreover, the increase in body temperature that happens during exercise is thought to enhance sleep quality by helping drop in the body temperature during sleep.

What’s more, being involved in regular exercise seems to provide benefits to older adults, who are often impacted by sleep disorders.

You can be flexible as per your needs with the kind of exercise you want to choose. It appears that either aerobic exercise alone or aerobic exercise combined with resistance training, both can help improve sleep quality 

9. Exercise can reduce pain

Although chronic pain can be very daunting, exercise can actually help decrease it.

Recent studies show that exercise aid relieves chronic pain.

In fact, one review of several studies found that exercise can help those with chronic pain decrease their pain and enhance their quality of life.

Several studies also show that exercise can help control pain linked to various health conditions, like chronic low back pain, fibromyalgia, and chronic soft tissue shoulder disorder, to name a few.

Physical activity can also increase pain tolerance and reduce pain perception.

10. Exercise can enhance a better sex life

Exercise has been proven to improve sex drive. Engaging in regular exercise can strengthen the heart, enhance blood circulation, tone muscles, and improve flexibility, all of which can help to boost your sex life.

Physical activity can also boost sexual performance and sexual pleasure while rising the frequency of sexual activity.

Take Away

Exercise offers incredible benefits that can enhance nearly every aspect of your health. Regular physical activity can increase the production of certain hormones that make you feel happier and help you sleep better.

Whether you practice a specific sport or follow the guideline of specific activity per week, you can inevitably boost your health in many ways.