We’ve all heard about the importance of working out for our physical fitness. But it’s less understood that exercise is necessary for overall health.
Over the years, numerous studies have connected regular activity with contentment and sedentary lifestyles with mood disorders like depression and anxiety.
In this blog, we’ll break down the studies and show you how exercise isn’t just for your looks — it’s crucial to your mental and physical well-being.
Table of Contents
1. Boosting Your Brain Health
Everything in your body starts with your brain. This is the control center of each system and organ that keeps you breathing, thinking, and moving.
It makes sense that the ultimate goal of what you do should involve keeping your brain operating at peak performance. With regular activity, this becomes more likely to continue throughout your lifetime.
Exercise is linked to improved memory functioning and reduced cognitive decline, such as dementia. If you live a sedentary lifestyle, you’re nearly twice as likely to develop memory issues later in life.
There are various causes of this, but one common thread seems to be that activity leads to an increase in blood circulation, keeping the oxygen flowing throughout your body and in your brain.
2. Improving Your Mood
In addition to better brain health, working out improves your mood, too. When you exercise, it activates the part of your brain that releases feel-good chemicals.
Each hormone in your brain is responsible for various jobs. Endorphins, stress hormones, and serotonin control your mood. When you exercise, it creates an influx of these happy hormones, helping alleviate feelings of depression and anxiety. It also speeds up your heart rate, triggering norepinephrine, which aids your brain in handling stress.
In fact, exercise is such an integral part of mood control that it’s a regular part of treatment for patients with mood-based mental disorders. Many experts suggest getting regular workouts before they move on to prescription medication.
3. Managing Your Weight
So much of our confidence is tied to our body image, and for most of us, that includes our weight. Working out is a great way to manage this concern. You can “bulk up” if you think you’re too skinny, lose pounds and inches if you’re worried that you’re overweight, and maintain your current weight if you’re happy where you are.
Your eating patterns play a crucial role in your weight, of course. You’ll need to ensure you’re eating more calories than you’re burning in order to stay healthy. Overeating is a different weight management issue. When you work out regularly, it offsets some of the calories you consume.
How much exercise you need depends on your unique situation. In general, if you want to lose weight, you’ll need to burn more calories than you consume, and vice versa if your goal is to bulk up.
Talk to your doctor to set up a workout plan that is right for your health concerns and any medication you’re taking. For instance, certain strains of medical marijuana are more likely to increase your appetite, while others help curb it. Check out this article by Veriheal to learn how to enhance the effects of your cannabis while still staying healthy.
4. Reducing the Risk of Deadly Diseases
Brain health and confidence are important, but you want to live a long, healthy life where you get to enjoy those benefits. Exercising increases your chances of reaching this goal by decreasing the risk of common dangerous health conditions.
Two of the top causes of death in the US are heart disease and stroke. Regular workouts help prevent these conditions by increasing circulation, lowering your blood pressure, and evening out your cholesterol levels.
Type 2 diabetes is another chronic and deadly disease, along with its counterpart, metabolic syndrome. These conditions stem from too much sugar, insufficient exercise and Vitamin D, low HDL cholesterol, high triglycerides, and high blood pressure.
Regular exercise can prevent both diseases, and if you already have one or both, you’ll notice the benefits of working out soon after you get started. Mild to moderate physical activity helps, but for the best results, aim for moderate workouts.
Conclusion
Working out isn’t just for fitness buffs and those who want to “look good.” It’s a vital part of your overall physical and mental well-being. If you want to live a long, healthy life, add exercise to your schedule as often as possible, and you’ll be more likely to reach that long-term goal.