The Skinnythick Six: 6 Reasons to Excercise
Exercise is part of a strategy for overall healthy lifestyle. Even modest exercise can have great benefits to you and help to increase your rate of weight loss if you are on a diet. If you like to eat, a vigorous exercise routine will allow you to eat larger servings of the foods that you crave (although that might not be the best use of your calories). Exercise can also extend your life by strengthening your core, muscles and reinforcing your bone support.
In addition to the list below, check out my Pinterest post on the topic!
Here are SKINNYTHICKSIX on EXERCISE!
1. Reduces Blood Pressure!
High blood pressure is a lead contributor to heart disease. High blood pressure can be the result of plaque build-up in your arteries as a result of eating too many high-fat content foods. Exercise helps reduce your blood pressure, in part, by attacking the plaque in your arteries. As the arteries widen, the blood flows through more freely, and your blood pressure eventually starts to drop. Hypertension also decreases as the result of exercise because your heart, a muscle, is getting a workout. The stronger your heart muscle gets, the greater its ability to pump blood through the arteries, which also helps to reduce your blood pressure.
2. Helps Reduce the Risk of Diabetes
The onset of Type 2 Diabetes is a major issue, especially in recent times where there is greater access to fast foods and high sugar content drinks. Type 2 diabetes presents a serious risk to your well-being. Regular exercise can help improve your body’s ability to metabolize glucose, which is a key factor in your ability to ward off this disease.
3. Keeps Your Bones Strong
As we grow older, we lose bone strength. However, exercise is a key to helping us to maintain bone health. Specifically, resistance training, in which we lift weights, helps to strengthen our bones. Researchers suggest that we need no less than an hour a week of increasingly strenuous weight-lifting to work to improving your bone health.
4. Reduces the Risk of Arthritis
Exercise, in moderation, can help to address the symptoms of arthritis. Arthritis occurs due to abnormalities in the cartilage and outgrowth of bones in the joints. Indeed, unlike the other physical benefits of exercise, reducing the chances of arthritis doesn’t depend on heavy duty aerobic activity or even weight training. (Actually, you can increase the risk of arthritis if you do too much of the wrong kind of exercise – such as running on concrete.) Instead, consider exercises which allow you to engage in stretching and flexibility training through yoga, Tai Chi, or other ways to increase the range of movement of your joints. This will lower the risk of injury through muscle tears or torn ligaments, and in the process protect your joints from damage caused by overuse.
5. It Helps You Sleep!
Exercise helps you to sleep better in the evening. The physical exertion helps to regulate your body’s rhythm cycle. In turn, a good night’s sleep helps to improve immune functioning and even lowers the risk for heart disease and diabetes!
6. Finally – Exercise Lowers the Risk of Dementia!
Exercise improves blood flow to the brain and improves your overall mental faculties. In addition, it lowers your chances for developing dementia based on cardiovascular illness because of the improved blood flow to your entire body, including your brain. Because dementia due to cardiovascular disease is hard to distinguish from other forms of dementia, it’s hard to say that exercise could actually slow or prevent Alzheimer’s disease. However, by nourishing your brain, exercise can give you an added advantage that might help combat this otherwise untreatable disease. It’s even possible that exercise can help slow or prevent Alzheimer’s disease by improving your glucose and fat metabolism because some of the brain alterations found in Alzheimer’s disease may be due to abnormalities in these processes. For example, researchers have found recently that lowering a person’s risk for diabetes can lower the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. It’s possible that lack of a healthy lifestyle may have led the illness to develop in many older adult sufferers today. To the extent that exercise is more prevalent now than in years past, there may actually be a decrease in dementia in the future.
