23 Health Benefits of Exercise and Physical Activity for Adults

A lot of people go to the gym or run/walk on the pavement to boost their cardiovascular health, or to build muscles, and to get a great body as well. In the past decades, studies have shown that physical activity and exercise can help people improve their overall health naturally and safely. Today, take a walk with us to explore how exercise can be beneficial for the human health via top 23 health benefits of exercise and physical activity for adults and elderly.

General Health Benefits of Exercise and Physical Activities for Adults

1. Decrease Stress

As usual, people often get stressed after hard working days at the office. Then, taking a walk or going to the gym for quick workouts will be the best solution to relieve stress. In fact, one of the most popular health benefits of exercise is stress reduction. Due to exercising, you will manage physical as well as mental stress. By exercising, people also can dramatically moderate the response of the brain to stress. Hence, right from today, you should go ahead with exercise and get sweaty  – work out in order to alleviate your stress and enhance the ability of your body to handle mental tension. That is simple win-win!

2. Promote Happy Chemicals

Exercise can release endorphins that create the feelings of happiness and euphoria. Even, studies indicated that exercise could lessen the symptoms among the clinically depressed. So, experts recommend those people who are feeling stressed or just blue to go the gym regularly to control this issue. You do not need to count the hours spending on gym, just 30 minutes of exercising several times per week could immediately speed up your overall mood.

3. Regulate Blood Pressure

Regular physical activity could regulate blood pressure in those people with imbalanced blood pressure levels. Physical activity also alleviates body fat, which is associated with high blood pressure.

4. Enhance Self-confidence

When exercising, you will naturally boost self-esteem as well as promote self-image. Regardless of weight, gender, size, or age, physical activity or exercise will rapidly elevate the perception of a person of his/her attractiveness, that is, self-worth.

5. Heart Disease and Stroke

Daily exercise could assist you in preventing heart disease and stroke by strengthening your heart muscle, enhancing your good cholesterol levels (called high-density lipoprotein: HDL) and lowering bad cholesterol levels (named low-density lipoprotein: LDL). Also, it can boost blood flow and enhance your heart’s working capacity. Once you optimize these factors, they can supply extra benefits of reducing the risk from peripheral vascular disease.

6. Prevent Cognitive Reduction

When people get older, it is unpleasant, but it is true, that their brains get a little hazy. As degenerative and aging diseases, such as Alzheimer’s kill the brain cells, the brain really shrinks, reducing a lot of important brain functions in the process. Whilst a healthy diet and exercise cannot cure Alzheimer’s, they could shore up the brain against the reduction of cognitive functions which start after the age of 45. Exercise, especially between the age 25 and 45, can increase the chemicals in the brain which prevents the degeneration of the hippocampus, a critical part of the brain for learning and memory.

7. Speed up Brain Power

Logging miles on the treadmill can give people a trim body, but adding more cardio to your life will also boost your productivity, renew your energy and turn you into an unstoppable success machine.

Just one 30-minute cardio session can pump extra blood to the brain, delivering the nutrients and oxygen it needs to perform at its best. Cardio exercise also floods the brain with chemicals, which boost other functions, like problem solving, memory, decision making. Recently, some studies found that this kind of exercise can lead to permanent structural changes to the brain.

8. Maintain Healthy Weight

Exercise could prevent excess weight gain and maintain weight loss. When you engage in physical activities, you will be able to burn calories. The more intense the exercise is, the more calories you can burn. It is not necessary for you to set aside too many hours for exercise in order to reap weight loss benefits. In case that you cannot engage in actual workout, you can get active throughout the day by taking stairs instead of using elevator, for instance.

9. Control Addiction

Exercise can help addictions. Short exercise sessions could also efficiently distract alcohol or drug addictions, helping de-prioritize cravings. Over-consumption of alcohol can disrupt many body processes which results in serious outcomes. One of them is sleep disorders. As a recommendation, when working out, those addicted to alcohol will fall asleep naturally without drinking alcohol. Exercise can help reboot the body clock, helping people fall asleep at the right time.

10. Get Things done Easily

When you feel uninspired in the cubicle, then you should spend time on walking or jogging. By this way, you will be more productive and have higher energy levels than normal. Whist busy schedules could make it tough to do regular workouts in gym clubs in the middle of the day, some experts claim that midday is the ideal time for doing exercise because of the body’s circadian rhythms.

11. Helps Arthritis Sufferers

As you age, it is critical to protect your bones, joints, and muscles as well. Keeping healthy bones, joints, and muscles also ensure that you can do your daily activities and be physically active. Doing muscle-strengthening, bone-strengthening physical activity or aerobic exercises can slow the loss of bone density which comes with age.

Regular physical activity helps arthritis as well as other condition impacting the joints.  In case you have arthritis, doing moderate-intensity or low-impact activity aerobic activity could not only enhance your own ability to manage pain, but also make your life better.

12. Promote Better Sleep

If you are struggling to fall asleep, or stay sleep, then regular exercise will assist you in falling asleep more quickly and deepening your sleep. However, you should not exercise too close your bedtime because you might be too energized to feel sleepy.

13. Boost your Sex Life

Do you feel too exhausted to enjoy physical intimacy? Then, regular exercise can help you look better and feel energized, leading to positive effects on the sex life. However, there is more to it than that. Doing exercise regularly will lead to improved arousal for female. With men who exercise daily, they are less likely to have problems with erectile dysfunction than those who do not exercise.

14. Improve Skin Condition

When it comes to health benefits of exercise, we cannot overlook the effect on skin. Exercise can boost circulation and the delivery of nutrients and oxygen to the skin, helping to detoxify your body by removing poisons.

When exercise boosts oxygen to your skin, it also increases the natural production of collagen, the connective tissue which plumps the skin. Also, your skin is improved after doing exercise due to the enhancement in blood flow.

15. Lift the Mood

As mentioned above, regular exercise alleviates the symptoms of depression and boosts psychological fitness. Even, it can produce positive changes in some chemical levels in the body, which might have an impact on ones’ psychological state.

Endorphins are hormones associated with a positive, happy feeling. A low level of endorphins is linked with depression. When exercising, this substance will be increased. Therefore, it might help people ease symptoms of stress and depression. In other words, exercise can promote the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain, which sends specific messages among brain cells. Though only a small amount of all serotonin is located in the human brain, this neurotransmitter still plays a key role in keeping the mood calm.

16. Reduce Cancer Risk

Many studies have confirmed that the chances of suffering from some types of cancers could be greatly decreased in regularly active people. Physically active women tend to have a lower risk of breast cancer than people who are not active.

In reality, physical activity protects you from developing certain cancers, containing colon and breast cancer, and possibly lung and endometrial (uterine lining) cancer. Physical activity most likely influences the development of colon cancer in multiple ways. Physical activity might protect against colon cancer and tumor development through its role in hormone metabolism, insulin regulation, energy balance, and by reducing the time the colon is exposed to potential carcinogens. In other words, exercise also alters some inflammatory and immune factors, some of which might influence colon cancer risk.

Health Benefits of Exercise and Physical Activity for the Elderly

1. Increase Metabolism

Moderate exercises are good for older adults. They help to boost metabolism that tends to slow down with their age. Besides, exercise also helps older people maintain muscle mass and burn calories to stay motivated.

2. Reduce Chronic Diseases and Illnesses

For over 50-year-old adults, exercise helps reduce illnesses and chronic diseases. As a result, they will have improved immune function, heart health, controlled blood pressure levels, stronger bone density, and better digestion. It is also proven that older people who take exercise regularly have lower risks of chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, osteoporosis and colon cancer.

3. Enhance Flexibility, Balance and Mobility 

Exercise is an essential part of the elderly’s health care to enhance flexibility and mobility, posture, coordination and balance. Strength training exercises also help alleviate chronic conditions related to flexibility in older people, such as arthritis and falls.

4. Prevents Dementia

Exercise helps enhance brain functions and control brain disorders in the elderly. It keeps their brain being active; prevent cognitive decline, memory loss and dementia.

5. Prevent Injuries and Muscle Weakness

Many older people of the age of 60s and above have serious health issues like the loss of independence, hip fracture, muscle weakness, weak legs, reduced grip strength, poor balance, cognitive impairment, visual impairment, impaired gait, injuries and death caused by falls and other injuries. By regularly taking exercise, they can lower the risk of those unexpected injuries and aging problems.

Among these health problems in the elderly, muscle weakness is the biggest risk causing their falls and injuries. Tai Chi exercise is considered an ideal method to improve balance, so it helps reduce the risk of falling among seniors.

6. Manages Diabetes

Doing exercise regularly can actually protect you from diabetes. A study indicated that non-diabetic older people with borderline-elevated blood sugar levels practiced more physical activities and they had lower incidences of diabetes, in comparison with the controlled group.

Both strength training and aerobic exercise routines can help control blood sugar levels in patients who have diabetes. In other words, lifestyle habits, including exercise is a natural remedy to control sugar levels and helps older peoplesf diabetes. Remember to choose the right exercises for seniors, if not they may get unwanted effects and unsolvable consequences.

7. Reduce the Development of Knee Osteoarthritis 

According to a study, 50% of women and 1/3 of men suffer from knee osteoarthritis. The osteoarthritis progresses can increase pain, reduce mobility and cause difficulty in daily activities for seniors. As a result, it leads to disability and reduces the quality of their lives. To prevent knee osteoarthritis, as an adult in middle age, you should take exercise regularly to enhance mobility and reduce the risks of symptomatic osteoarthritis.

Source – http://vkool.com/health-benefits-of-exercise/