TweetLearn About why Exercise is Still King


The Mounting Evidence
The short-term benefits of exercise, as many of you may already know of, are the reasons why a great majority of people do it. Exercise makes you stronger, increases your stamina, elevates mood and increases overall happiness and self-image. These reasons are enough to get the majority of people to keep exercising, but what one doesn’t realize is that there are many ways that exercise can help you in the long-run. Exercise boosts your immune system, helps prevent disease, increases circulation of blood and nutrients, and helps flush the body of toxins (clearing and promoting healthy skin) and can strengthen the walls of the heart.

Exercise Can Boost Immune Function
Early studies reported that daily exercisers reported fewer colds once they began running. Moderate exercise has been linked to a positive immune system response and a temporary boost in the production of macrophages, the cells that attack bacteria. It is believed that regular, consistent exercise can lead to substantial benefits in immune system health over the long-term. This claim is backed up by more recent studies that have shown that there are physiological changes in the immune system as a response to exercise. During moderate exercise immune cells circulate through the body more quickly and are better able to kill bacteria and viruses. After exercise ends, the immune system generally returns to normal within a few hours, but consistent, regular exercise seems to make these changes a bit more long-lasting. [1]

Exercise and Fitness Prevent Disease
That is a proven fact, and yet more Americans than ever are suffering from obesity and type-two diabetes and are considered an epidemic in the United States. If you are overweight, and especially if you are obese, or if you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes, then listen to your doctor and begin a regular fitness and exercise program. You’ll be glad you did. One of the benefits of fitness and exercise, as any physician will tell you, it that fitness and exercise help control blood sugar. A diabetic who takes medication daily may find that less medication is needed with a regular fitness and exercise program. Many diabetics who stay with fitness and exercise programs find that they are able to quit the medication and get their diabetes under control in a totally natural way. Triglycerides are also too high for most Americans. High triglycerides are linked to heart disease, including heart attacks and strokes. A great natural way to reduce your level of triglycerides is to simply begin and stick with a fitness and exercise program, while eating a sensible diet. Triglycerides at too high a level are also linked to high blood sugar, and it is common for diabetics to have high triglyceride levels. Therefore, in this case fitness and exercise can take care of two potential health risks at the same time.


Many people have marveled at the way being overweight has become an American way of life, and wondered what caused it. Many point to sedentary lifestyles, working in front of computers, and watching too much television. In addition, many Americans eat diets high in fat and carbohydrates. Whatever the root cause, fitness and exercise can be a major part of the cure. Engaging in physical activity, increasing the heart rate, and just getting active can help a person lose weight, control triglyceride levels and improve diabetes and should not be ignored. Parents should restrict time spent by children with video games or watching television and encourage them to engage in fitness and exercise the way children in past generations have, playing games like baseball, basketball and jump rope. Children who learn the benefits of fitness and exercise at an early age will go into adults, who enjoy fitness and exercise, lead healthier lifestyles and tend to live longer, healthier and obviously happier lives. [2]

Exercise Can Affect the Brain Positively
Exercise leads to the release of certain neurotransmitters in the brain that help decrease pain, both physical and mental. Exercise exerts its effects on the brain through several mechanisms, including neurogenesis (creation of new neurons), mood enhancement, and endorphin release. Aerobic exercise strengthens neural connections by increasing the number of connections between neurons, creating a denser network, which is then better able to process and store information. Exercise stimulates the release of endorphins within 30 minutes from the start of activity. These endorphins tend to minimize the discomfort of exercise and are even associated with a feeling of euphoria (runners high). It has also been shown that physically active people recover from mild depression more quickly, and physical activity is strongly correlated with good mental health as people age. [3]

Other Research
A study conducted at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston showed that exercise is three times more important in helping you live longer than characteristics in your genes. Smoking, diabetes, obesity and hypertension significantly reduced the likelihood of a 90-year life span, while regular vigorous exercise substantially improved it. Researchers studied almost 2,400 men in an attempt to investigate how to have a longer life span. An estimated 41% of participants, actively exercising, lived to be 90 or over, with the variation in human life spans found to be linked to variables such as smoking, diet and exercise. [4]


New research suggests that a few hours of walking or other exercise each week may help breast cancer survivors live longer. In the study of nearly 3,000 women, those who exercised this amount were less likely to die of their breast cancer than women who got less than 1 hour of physical activity each week. [5]


Another eight-year study evaluated the fitness and mortality levels of 13,344 men and women. Researchers involved with the study found that exercise reduces the death rate from all causes, particularly cancer and heart disease. The subjects were grouped by gender into five categories ranging from least to most fit. The results of the study, which were published in the Journal of The American Medical Association, showed that the higher the fitness level the lower the death rate. Compared with the most-fit subjects, individuals in the least-fit category had death rates 3.4 and 4.6 times higher for men and women respectively. [6]


The results from these studies and the facts listed above should be powerful enough information to get you to start exercising. A modest amount of exercise can and does go a long way. Even if it is only 30 minutes of walking every day; that is a big step up from no exercise at all. Exercise has no age requirement: people of all ranges should exercise to reap the many positive long-term benefits.

TweetWow! can I say wow again???...I could give an entire speech just off the information in this article. I need to save this. Thanks.