Introduction
Physical inactivity increases the risk of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, depression and anxiety.
People who don’t regularly exercise may lose up to 80% of their muscle strength by age 65.
According to a Canadian research the worsened mobilities rates also increased the risk of falls and increased fear of falling.
Being active and exercising regularly is very important to your health.
Exercise is important for your immunity
Physical inactivity, along with mental, emotional, and spiritual stagnation, can lead to cellular inactivity and stagnation, compromising immunity.
Firstly physical activity stimulates cellular immunity by increasing circulation of immune cells in your body from bone marrow, the lungs and the spleen.
Therefore regular exercise makes you more resistant to infections.
Inflammation and inflammatory immune response is significantly reduced by doing exercise.
People who exercise less and are depressed have a decrease in the ability of T and B lymphocytes to clear viruses, making people more prone to viral infections.
Secondly, physical activity increases your body temperature which may prevent bacterias growing in your body.
Therefore regular training makes you more resistant to infections.
Thirdly, exercise helps to sleep better by giving better sleep in quality and quantity. Good sleep enhances your immunity system.
Fourthly, moderate-intensity physical activity can reduce the development and release of stress hormones and increase the neurotransmitters in the brain by improving mood and behaviour and feeling good.
This prevents stress and depression.
Fifthly, regular movement will lower your risk of developing heart disease and diabetes which is better for your immunological function in your body.
Physical Activity is important in weight control
Aerobic exercise also known as cardio like walking, running, cycling, swimming is effective burning calories. It improves your metabolic rate and metabolism and helps you to lose body fat.
Resistance Training like weight lifting and calisthenics increases your body tone, strength, muscles and vitality. Having higher amount of muscles burn more calories by having better metabolism.
Metabolic rate (meaning food converted to energy) decreases by 5% every decade after 20 years. Therefore if you are 50 years of age, your metabolic rate has already decreased by 15%.
Muscle mass is reduced by 3 kg every decade and replaced with fat tissue. Therefore if you are 50 years of age, your muscle mass has already been decreased by 9kg.
Muscle cells are metabolically more active than fat tissue. However it doesn’t lose weight necessarily, but you have more healthier and stronger muscles and improved metabolism as a result from exercise.
Resistance training helps to keep the weight off, once you have reached the ideal body weight, and keeps your metabolic rate at higher level.
Exercise might suppress appetite effect according to research, especially morning exercise routine seemed to balance the calorie intake and consumption better compared to evening exercise.
Lung capacity improves through exercise
Due to increased cardiac output from physical activity, pulmonary perfusion rises as much as 5 times and also oxygen diffusing capacity.
Permeability becomes better on alveoli level, meaning that oxygen exchange has improved.
This provides better capacity for pulmonary blood capillaries to be oxygenated, therefore the capacity of the lungs improves.
During exercise oxygen consumption and ventilation can increase up to 30 x times more.
There are many neural changes (sensory and motor) called impulses that are activated through exercise.
Exercise helps with bone density
A study (published in the American Journal of Physiology” revealed that exercise routine was as effective as taking antioxidant supplements.
Osteoporosis is diagnosed through bone density screening and through ageing process, bone density starts to deteriorate
Bone density screening research has shown that exercise is better method at building strong bones than calcium
Exercise prevents the development of diseases
Exercise helps lowering the risk of developing the type 2 Diabetes.
Exercise strengthens muscles to draw sugar from the blood stream and use it for energy more effectively. It improves insulin effectiveness and the body’s ability to utilise it.
Being active and keeping moving our bodies on a regular basis prevents all types of cancer development including colon, breast, and prostate cancer. This has been proven by various scientific researches.
Happy Heart
Your heart pumps approximately 100 000 times per day pumping around 5000 mls of blood around the body through circulation.
Physical activity helps your heart to rest. Inactive person’s heart is working harder and being less efficient pumping the blood.
Exercise lowers the resting heart rate as stroke volume expands and enlarges the size of the heart.
Benefits of exercise particularly to your heart includes increased cardiac output, and improved oxygen delivery to tissues.
Haemoglobin level increases and skeletal muscles develop more capillary networks.
Exercise has been scientifically proven to decrease blood pressure.
Exercise improves your body’s ability to dissolve blood clots. If your cholesterol level is high, it can easily accumulate on the walls of arteries and narrows the blood vessel plus making it easier to form blood clots.
Physical activity increases so called “good” high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels and reduces “bad” cholesterol levels.
Keep your heart happy by exercising daily…
