Strengthen Your Bones And Muscles
Your bones, muscles and joints are the crucial players that support your body during your daily activities and even periods of inactivity. Research has found that moderate-intense levels of aerobic, muscle and bone strengthening exercises can slow bone density loss as you age, decrease your chances of hip fractures in elderly years, improve and prevent arthritis, protect your joints, help you to build muscles and protect your muscles.
Improves Your Mental Health And Mood
Staying active can keep your brain working more effectively, aid learning, keep your judgment skills sharper and help you think more clearly. Exercise is full of mental health benefits, increasing your happy hormones, keeping you happier, less stressed and more confident.
Improve Your Ability To Do Daily Activities
Aging or chronic pain can lead to limitation of your ability to do everyday activities, such as grocery shopping, taking your dog for a walk, climbing stairs or playing with your grandchildren. With elderly, the risk of losing balance and falling is an added problem. Exercise, including aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities, can help improve your abilities, helping you keep up with your everyday routine and prevent your risk of falling at old age. Exercise can keep you younger longer, reducing the typical signs of aging.
Increase Your Chances Of Living Longer
Exercise can increase your physical and mental health and reduce your risks of serious and chronic health conditions, including heart problems and cancer. Therefore, exercise can reduce your risk of dying from the leading causes of death: cardiovascular disease, stroke and cancer. While keeping you healthier, exercise can also allow you to live a quality life for a longer amount of time.
What Happens To Your Body When You Don’t Move It
“A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.” - Winnie the Pooh
“Use it or lose it.” I bet you’ve heard this before. There is a lot of truth to this. If you don’t exercise regularly or at all, you not only will miss out experiencing the benefits of exercise, but your body will also suffer from the lack of it.
If you don’t exercise, you may experience the following:
- Decreased cardiovascular health. Remember, heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S. You want to keep your heart healthy.
- Decreased lung health. If you don’t exercise your lungs, maximum oxygen capacity can decrease. You start breathing slower and heavier. With all the heavy breathing, your diaphragm gets tired more easily, which can lead to poor posture too.
- Compromised digestion. The lack of exercise can lead to tummy troubles, such as digestion, absorption, secretion and elimination issues.
- Compromised brain health. With exercise, your blood flow increases and your brain starts functioning better. When you don’t exercise, the opposite can happen; your brain functions can slow down and your mental health can suffer, increasing your chances of depression, anxiety and stress.
- Compromised kidney function. The lack of exercise can decrease your kidneys’ ability to filter proteins into your urine and keep you hydrated through the absorption of water.
- Increased chance of adrenal fatigue. When you exercise, cortisol (the stress hormone) gets released and helps your body to mobilize its energy stores into fuel. With the lack of exercise, cortisol can build up, leading to adrenal fatigue.
- Decreased muscle and joint health. Exercise continuously challenges, trains and builds your body, keeping your bones stronger, your joints lubricated and your muscles stronger. With the lack of activity, your body can get lazy and your muscles, bones and joints can start to deteriorate.
How To Start A Life Of Movement
“Movement is the song of the body.” -Vanda Scaravelli
Reading this, you can’t be anything but convinced that exercise is necessary for your physical and mental health. But how do you start an exercise routine if you haven’t exercised for a while (or ever)?
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