You know exercise is supposed to be good for your heart. You also know it is supposed to make you look better. But do you know how many other practical things exercise is good for?
I am talking about moderate exercise, or specifically, exercise that is stimulating without over stressing the body. Or exercise that is mostly of the kind of effort that can be maintained without feeling like you are in survival mode. The kind of exercise that leads to a gradual increase of stamina and strength.
Exercise is more than a beauty treatment. It is not a superficial act of physical ability. It is something your body needs to function well. Your body was designed to move regularly. Doing this causes the inner workings of it to do things more efficiently and more thoroughly.
1. Exercise stimulates deeper respirations that open the lungs more fully. Lungs that are thus inflated on a regular basis are less prone to infection. Keeping all of the alveoli (the thin walled, little balloon-like sacks deep in the lungs, where the blood vessels come close for oxygen) fully open makes it more likely there will be better oxygen exchange even at a resting state.
2. Exercise requires regular, repeated contraction of muscles, which is necessary for good return blood flow in the veins of the arms and legs. The veins are passive vessels, being too far removed from the pumping pressure of the heart to get help from it. For this reason, they have one-way valves in them that keep the blood from back flowing. However, in order for the blood to move well in the right direction, it has to be pushed by the squeezing of the muscles. If you want your appendages to feel refreshed, as well as have fewer poor blood flow issues, you should exercise.
3. Exercise increases blood flow throughout the body, both at the moment and for the times in between. As you use the muscles, they develop their circulatory network to accommodate the effort better the next time. All of this means that more blood is moving around, getting things to and from the cells. This brings everything from nutrition to healing agents to the cells in the body.
4. Exercise leads to better bowel function. It might be a simple act of gravity combined with shaking things up a bit, as it were. It might be that increased circulation throughout the body stimulates bowel function. It may even be related to how exercise helps you relax. As any competitive athlete knows, adrenaline also affects the bowels, and not always in a completely comfortable way, but for most recreational athletes, the effects of regular exercise are more along the lines of easy regularity.
5. Exercise that is regular and vigorous enough to generate some perspiration tends to reduce overall body odor. Or to put it more bluntly, the more you sweat, the less you smell. This is assuming you are wearing clean clothes, of course. And, unfortunately, some synthetics retain sweat odors in an unpleasant way. Aside from that, regular perspiring tends to clean out the body and all the things that cause such odors. So, besides helping with cooling, regular perspiration is rather handy!
6. Exercise promotes falling asleep and sounder sleep. By facilitating mental relaxation and physical tiredness, exercise addresses two major factors that can inhibit sleep. Add a nightly warm bath and half a glass of wine, and a good night’s sleep is very likely!
7. Exercise cannot be accomplished without movement and movement enhances general range of motion and flexibility. The muscle strength gained from using muscles increases ability to use said joints, which in turn, enhances range of motion. In case you are not familiar with the term “range of motion,” it is referring to the degree that joints can move as would be expected for a given joint. If that motion is not engaged in, the joint tends to lose the ability.
8. Exercise decreases the chance of injury in every day life. This is obviously not counting extreme adventures or pushing too hard beyond current abilities in exercise itself. What it means is that a strong body has core strength and balance. This supports the back. Having overall strength also allows the body to respond to slight exertions in daily life without straining muscles or getting out of breath in a way that affects thought processes.
In a nutshell, regular moderate exercise is some of the best natural health care you can give yourself. Like eating healthy food, it may not seem exciting some days, but you always feel better for doing it. And also like eating healthy food, you can certainly find some sort of exercise that you can enjoy even in the process of obtaining it. Exercise is not a frivolous thing or an indulgence that distracts. Exercise is very practically good for you from your head to your toes.