Exercise not only helps you live longer, it helps you live better.
In addition to strengthening your heart and muscles and protecting you against a range of diseases, exercise can also improve your mental and emotional functioning and even support your productivity and intimate relationships.
Read on to discover five ways exercise can improve your quality of life.
1. Prevent depression:
While a few laps around the block may not solve serious emotional problems, researchers know there is a strong link between regular exercise and improved mood.
Aerobic exercise causes the release of mood hormones, which relieve stress and promote a sense of well-being.
Additionally, the rhythmic muscle contractions that occur in almost any type of exercise can increase levels of serotonin, a brain chemical that fights negative feelings.
2. Improves sex life:
Both libido and performance benefit from moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise.
One study found that men who exercised for 30 minutes a day were 41% less likely than sedentary men to suffer from erectile dysfunction.
Exercise is also beneficial for women: one study found that 20 minutes of cycling increased women's sexual arousal by 169%.
3. Refine your mind:
Physical activity stimulates blood flow to the brain, which can help maintain brain function.
It also promotes good lung function, a characteristic of people whose memory and mental acuity remain strong as they age.
While all types of physical activity help keep the mind sharp, numerous studies have shown that aerobic exercise, in particular, successfully improves cognitive function.
4. Improves sleep:
Regular aerobic exercise provides three important benefits for sleep: it helps you fall asleep faster, spend more time in deep sleep, and wake up less often during the night.
In fact, exercise is the only known way for healthy adults to increase the amount of deep sleep they get, and deep sleep is essential for your body to renew and repair itself.
5. Protects mobility and vitality:
Regular exercise can slow the natural decline in physical performance that occurs with age.
By staying active, older adults can actually maintain their cardiovascular fitness, metabolism, and muscle function at the levels of much younger people.
Numerous studies have shown that people who were more active in mid-life were able to maintain their mobility and therefore their independence as they aged.
How can physical activities improve your quality of life?
Promoting physical activity as a way of life
As a parent, you should encourage healthy habits, including exercise, in your children .
Physical activity should be as much a part of their lives as diet and sleep.
Reassure them that sports such as biking (always with a helmet), swimming, basketball, jogging, brisk walking, cross-country skiing, dancing, aerobics and soccer, when practiced regularly, are not only fun but can also promote health.
Some sports, such as baseball, which require only sporadic activity, are beneficial in many ways, but they do not promote physical fitness.
Physical activity can benefit health in the following ways.
Increase cardiovascular endurance:
Regular physical activity can help protect against heart problems.
Exercise can improve your child's fitness, make him feel better, and strengthen his cardiovascular system.
Aerobic activity can allow the heart to pump more efficiently, thereby reducing the incidence of high blood pressure.
It can also increase blood levels of HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, the "good" form of cholesterol that removes excess fat from the bloodstream.
Although most cardiovascular diseases are considered adult diseases, fatty deposits have been detected in the arteries of children as young as three years old, and high blood pressure occurs in about 5% of young people.
At least three times a week, your middle-aged child should exercise continuously for twenty to thirty minutes at a heart rate above his or her resting level.
As a guide, the effort provided by continuous brisk walking is sufficient to maintain fitness.
Each exercise session should be preceded and followed by a period of warm-up and gradual cool-down, allowing the muscles, joints and cardiovascular system to transition in and out of vigorous activity, helping to ensure a safe workout.
This can be done by stretching for a few minutes before and after exercise.
Improve strength and endurance of large muscles.
As your child's muscles become stronger, he or she will be able to exercise for longer periods of time and protect himself or herself from injury.
Strong muscles provide better support for joints.
Modified sit-ups (knees bent, feet on the floor) can strengthen abdominal muscles, increase lung capacity, and protect against back injuries.
To strengthen the upper body, he can perform modified pull-ups (keeping the arms bent while hanging from a horizontal bar) and modified push-ups (placing the knees on the floor while extending the arms at the elbow).
Increase flexibility.
For good physical condition, children must be able to twist and bend their bodies through the full range of normal motion without overexertion or injury. When children are flexible in this way, they are more agile.
Although most people lose flexibility as they age, this process can be delayed by stretching to maintain flexibility throughout life, starting in childhood.
Stretching exercises are the best way to maintain or improve flexibility, and they can be incorporated into your child's warm-up and cool-down routines.
In most stretching exercises, your child should stretch to a position where he or she begins to feel tension, but no pain, and then hold for twenty to thirty seconds before relaxing.
It should not bounce when stretching, as this can cause injury to muscles or tendons.
Maintain a healthy weight.
12% of pre-pubescent children are overweight, but few of these young people are physically active. Exercise can actually burn calories and fat and reduce appetite.
Ask your pediatrician to help you determine if your child has a healthy body fat percentage for his or her age and gender.
Reduce stress.
Unmanaged stress can cause muscle tension, which can contribute to headaches, stomach aches, and other types of discomfort.
Your child needs to learn not only to recognize stress in his body, but also to defuse it effectively. Exercise is one of the best ways to control stress.
A physically active child is less likely to exhibit stress-related symptoms than his or her more sedentary peers.
What is the relationship between fitness and lifestyle?
Physical fitness is the state of being physiologically prepared to get the most out of life. Becoming fit is an ongoing process that requires hard work and significantly improves mental and physical functions.
Committing to healthy lifestyle habits is the only way to promote consistent fitness throughout life.
The essential components of a healthy lifestyle are maintaining a calorie balance, eating well, exercising and flexibility training.
Caloric balance
Although they've gotten a bad rap, calories are simply a unit of measurement for the fuel that runs your body and brain.
You don't want to have too much, or too little. Both scenarios can be disastrous for your weight and appearance and impair your ability to think clearly.
A calorie balance is the measurement of calories consumed compared to calories burned through exercise and daily activities.
If inputs and outputs are roughly the same, your body won't store extra calories as fat or burn your fat stores in desperation.
A good diet
Fitness is all about avoiding toxic inputs into your body. It is recommended to consume less than 10% of your calories from saturated fats, which are found in cheese, meat, butter, margarine and ice cream.
Trans fats, often called hydrogenated oils, are another potential problem. A 2006 animal study found that trans fats are an independent factor in weight loss.
In this study, primates fed trans fats did not necessarily lose weight, even though their calorie intake decreased.
On the positive side, following a plant-based diet rich in fruits and vegetables and whole grains is recommended.
Stretching
A good stretching routine is the precursor to a safe exercise session. Gently extending each muscle for an extended period of time helps prevent or alleviate soreness associated with intense exercise.
Proper stretching also helps prevent tears from hyperextension during exercise. Four areas where muscles tend to be very tight have been listed: "the hamstrings, hip flexors, calves, and chest muscles."
Exercise
Aerobic exercise, an essential component of any healthy lifestyle, works large muscles rhythmically over a period of time.
It is recommended to do 75 minutes per week of vigorous aerobic exercise, such as running and swimming, or 150 minutes per week of moderate activity, such as walking and cycling.
Strength training helps you both burn excess fat and build muscle that helps your body withstand daily wear and tear without injury.
You should do two sessions per week, focusing on all the major muscle groups in the body.
Benefits
The benefits of a healthy lifestyle include increased energy, improved mental clarity, better daily endurance, stronger bones, stronger muscles and a stronger heart.
Additionally, practicing a healthy lifestyle reduces the risk of a myriad of diseases, including type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. A healthy lifestyle actually sets the stage for good physical fitness.
Is swimming or running the best way to strengthen your lungs?
Both swimming and running improve cardiovascular endurance, which is the heart's ability to deliver oxygen through the blood to the body's major muscle groups and the muscles' ability to use that oxygen.
Lung capacity, or the amount of oxygen your lungs can take in and hold in a single breath, is an important part of cardiovascular endurance.
There is no evidence that swimming or running improves lung capacity more than the other, both being very beneficial physical activities.
Breathe: Cardiovascular Endurance and Lung Capacity
The better your cardiovascular endurance, the more efficient your body is at using oxygen, which improves your endurance for physical activities. Oxygen enters your blood through your lungs.
Your heart pumps this blood to your muscles and organs, where it is used by your cells and tissues in a complex process to produce energy that your body uses during daily activities as well as during times of more intense physical activity.
Although your lungs may not increase in size, cardiovascular exercise - including running and swimming - helps your body make the process of breathing and holding oxygen in your lungs more efficient.
Hit the Road: Running
Running is a popular form of cardiovascular exercise because of the low barriers involved in doing this activity. With the right running shoes, you can run almost anywhere.
By running, your body improves cardiovascular endurance and builds muscle, especially in the lower body, including the hips, thighs, calves and feet.
As your lungs improve their ability to hold oxygen, your heart will efficiently send oxygen-rich blood to your muscles, especially those working in your lower body.
Swimming works muscles in both your upper and lower body, so your heart has to send oxygen-rich blood to muscles in both extremities.
Like a fish: swimming
Swimming laps or for pleasure for an extended period of time will improve your lung capacity and cardiovascular endurance. Any cardio exercise should be done at least three times a week for 20 minutes or more.
As your cardiovascular system begins to adapt to your diet, your lungs will increase their oxygen uptake capacity with each breath, sending more oxygen into your blood.
Your heart will also beat more efficiently, sending more oxygen-rich blood to your muscles with each beat.
Cardiovascular exercise
Any form of cardiovascular exercise, including swimming and running, is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle.
Cardiovascular exercise increases lung capacity and improves heart efficiency by increasing your heart rate. Other forms of cardiovascular exercise include jumping rope and cycling.
