Exercise Is Important For Healthy Living

Exercise Helps To Improve Quality Of Life

You will find from my posts that I am a physically active person. I find that exercise helps in many ways to improve my quality of life, and my healthy living. Being physically active involves movement and the body loves movement, and it also loves stillness. Stillness is different from not being physically active.

I find my movement and stillness in different forms of activity. I find stillness and stretching of muscles while praying and meditating, which relaxes and smooths my energy. This allows my muscles to stretch so I have a wider movement of the muscle, which also allows for a fuller strengthening of the muscle during movement or exercise.

For exercise, I routinely do a boxing workout to keep my hands nice and to build my stamina, run or power walk on a treadmill to strengthen my legs and to build my stamina, ride my road bike long distance to strengthen legs and to build my stamina, do sit-ups to strengthen my core, and I occasionally do some Tai-Chi warm-ups to calm my energy, strengthen my legs, relax my hips, and to control my core and breathing. Exercise benefits us in the following ways:

Exercise Helps To Reduce The Risk Of Heart Disease

Exercise helps reduce unhealthy triglycerides, though triglycerides in themselves are not bad. The body converts calories it doesn't use right away into triglycerides, and stores them in fat cells. In between meals, hormones will release triglycerides for energy which is good, but high levels of triglycerides in the body can increase the risk of heart disease. Exercise also increases high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or "good cholesterol." This combination helps to keep the blood flowing smoothly, and decreases the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Exercise Increases Energy

Exercise induces changes in mitochondrial activity that can increase your energy on the cellular level. Mitochondria are "cellular power plants" that generate most of the cell's supply of chemical energy.

Exercise strengthens muscles, which results in conserving energy because less effort and energy is used to perform daily physical activities.

Exercise helps to keep the blood flowing smoothly, which helps in delivering oxygen and nutrients to the cells of the body more effectively and efficiently.

Exercise Helps To Control Weight

Exercise burns excess calories that would be stored as triglycerides in fat cells, increasing the weight of fat cells.

Exercise Improves Mood And Combats Depression

Exercise releases "feel good" transmitters and endorphins into the bloodstream which improve natural immunity, reduce the perception of pain, and are implicated in improving mood. Studies have shown that exercise reduces depression, and it might be an acceptable substitute for antidepressants.

Exercise Stimulates The Production Of Brain Cells

Exercise stimulates neurogenesis in the hippocampus portion of the brain, which is associated with memory and thinking. Neurogenesis is the process by which neurons are generated from neural stem and progenitor cells, and studies have supported that this also happens in adult humans.

References:
Fitness
Controlling Cholesterol
Does Exercise Really Boost Your Mood?
Exercise and Depression
Adult Neurogenesis in Humans

Tags: boxing, circulation, cycling, exercise, powerwalk, workout