4 Health Risks that are Minimized via Exercising
Hey Angels and Alphas,
Although it can bring a plethora of other benefits to any male or female, fitness is all about health. And although it can sometimes be difficult to fit regular workouts into a busy schedule, seeing exercise as preventive medicine will absolutely help shift your priorities.
Boosting your amount of physical activity will help you with getting leaner and building muscle, but regular exercise is about much more than aesthetic transformations. Just like weight loss can improve your health risk levels, exercising can do the same.
Today, we’re here to talk about five chronic conditions that are positively affected by regular activity:
#1 ARTHRITIS
Just as exercise helps your muscles and your bones, it can also be extremely beneficial for the joints in your body. According to the Johns Hopkins Arthritis Center, regular training or pretty much any type of physical activity can keep your muscles around the affected joints strong and work to replenish the lubrication to the cartilage around the joint. This ultimately helps reduce stiffness and pain as well as the inflammation which is crucial to arthritis management.
And what’s more, it doesn’t even take much to make a difference. The Arthritis Foundation has noted numerous times that as little as 20-30 minutes of moderate-intensity training up to five times a week will help your joints stay limber and strengthen the muscles that support and stabilize your knees and hips.
#2 DEPRESSION
Another, and one of the most significant, benefits of regular exercise is the massive positive impact it can have on your emotional wellness — even from a seemingly small amount of physical activity.
One all-around international study discovered that just one hour of exercise a week can serve as a preventative for depression in people of all ages and genders.
In the research, the people who did no exercise at all experienced a 44% increase in their change of developing depression when compared to people who were exercising one or two hours every week!
Although the researchers are still trying to determine why this defensive effect might occur, some other studies have suggested that exercise raises levels of neurotransmitters such as endorphins and hormones like serotonin… both of which play an important role in depression.
#3 DEMENTIA
Could exercise potentially head off the cognitive impairment that naturally happens as you age? Countless studies suggest exactly that… nothing that people who exercise (who reach their midlife stages) can reduce their risk of cognition decline and dementia overall.
This is because exercise can help you maintain the volume in your hippocampus, the part of the brain that’s associated with memory and learning (as well as emotion.) As you get older, that part of the brain tends to shrink which contributes to difficulty with memory recall and information processing. Exercise will help improve your cardiovascular and metabolic health… both of which are important in brain function.
In one of the most recent studies published in the medical journal Neurology, researchers found that women who had better cardiovascular fitness had a nearly 90% lower risk of dementia than women who were only moderately fit. That’s huge!
#4 OSTEOPOROSIS
Another thing that changes as we get older is our bone density which can naturally lead to osteoporosis, a chronic disorder that affects up to 20% of men and 30% of women over the age of 50. This condition can greatly impact quality of life, increasing risk of fragility and fractures.
One strategy that can help us is resistance training. Studies note that weight-bearing exercise will help you increase bone mass density, even in people who are already diagnosed with this condition.
When people are forced to bear more weight than they’re used to, their bones will respond by becoming denser. This can happen at any age. The golden rule of thumb is using exercises such as jumping, resistance training, as well as weight training, plus a combination of those exercises.
THE BOTTOM LINE IS… GET MOVING!
Knowing just how much you’re doing for your health through exercise is useful, especially if you’re just starting your journey and you have yet to see other results including weight loss, better endurance, or more strength.
The key is to slowly and gradually begin building exercise into your routine. Experts note that you can increase exercise duration and intensity over time, and you can have a lot of fun while trying to find a workout that feels best for you. Just keep started and keep going from there.
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