Why Physical Fitness Is Important For Us?

Who needs physical fitness? Well, everyone! It is important for people to stay active throughout their lives and activeness of the body affects the activeness of the mind as well. And what you do as a part of physical activity isn’t as important as whether or not you are doing something. Any type of moderate activity done over a period of time be it walking or playing for while on daily basis. Therefore, the importance of physical activity is there not ‘the’ physical activity. Several advertisements will offer you a number of exercise equipment claiming to provide you ‘the’ physical fitness exercises for ‘the’ physical fitness that you dream of. But, in all there is no magical secret to achieving it, there is no list of physical fitness exercises that gets you where you want sooner or less painstakingly.

A warm-up of 5 to 10 minutes will help your body to get the most benefit by increasing your blood flow. And then you are ready to prepare your body for activity. Follow the warm-up with several minutes of stretches to increase your flexibility and lower your risk for injury. Complete your selected activity for 20 to 30 minutes . After that, conclude the workout with 5 to 10 minutes of cool down and stretching.

Before we look at why we should exercise in this fitness article we should discuss;

How Much Of It Is Enough?

The key guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2018 suggests that:

• Do at least 2½ hours of moderate-intensity or 1¼ hours of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity a week.
• Include strength training using all of the major muscle groups two days a week or more.
• For additional health benefits, increase moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity to 5 hours a week.

Down below we take a look at the reasons that further emphasize the importance of physical activity:

Helps You Beat The Blues

Physical exercise releases endorphin and serotonin (popularly known as happy hormones). Scientists are also suggesting that doctors include physical activity in recommendations for patients suffering from depression. One Harvard study shows that a 15-minute run or one-hour walk a day decreases the risk of depression up to 26%, and prevents relapse.

Feels like a jackpot ain’t it? Get physical fitness along with curing your blues and move towards a brighter future with every day at the workout. And one ignored aspect of physical activity majorly outdoors is that it also increases social interaction or the chances of it for the least. We, humans, thrive on the social interactions and it has been proved to improve mental wellness.

Helps You Lose The Weight

I’m aware of its obviousness, but let’s go through it again. Exercising increases your metabolic rate and metabolic rate determines how fast you burn fat. Our body spends energy is three things majorly: digesting food, exercising and maintaining essential life functions like heartbeat and respiration. While dieting slows down the metabolic rate by reducing the calorie intake which is needed to support metabolism, hence reducing fat loss. Exercising on the contrary increases metabolism and speeds up your weight loss.

Helps To Increase Strength And Stamina For More Rigorous Activity

Muscle strength is a more obvious advantage of physical exercise but it also increases your bone density and flexibility. From the muscle growth and bone strengthening, you gain better balance and also your body’s ability to withstand shock from falls also increases. Mountain climbing, wall climbing or sky diving, whatever it is that you dream of doing, physical exercise is the only thing that gets you closer to your dream.

Reduces Your Risk of Chronic Disease

Exercising has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity, cardiovascular fitness and Puts your body composition on the right path and also decrease blood pressure and fat levels in the blood. Even in short term, lack of regular exercise can lead to a significant increase in the belly (the hardest of all fats to lose), which increases the risk of type-2 diabetes, heart diseases at an early age and early death. There’s no further to add to this and to summarize it, daily physical activity is essential to maintaining a healthy weight and reducing the risk of chronic disease.

Improves Your Quality of Life

Of course, physical fitness also allows you to do things that you may not otherwise be able to do. A sedentary lifestyle and a lack of physical activity can cause debilitating chronic pain and exercise can help reduce it. To name a few health conditions that exercise helps prevent are chronic soft tissue shoulder disorder, chronic low back pain and fibromyalgia. Exercise has favorable effects on the pain that’s associated with various conditions. It can also increase pain tolerance.

Promotes a Better Sex Life

Strengthen your cardiovascular system, improve blood flow, enhance flexibility and tone muscles through exercising, all of which can improve your sex life. Physical activity increases the frequency of sexual activity, as well as improves sexual pleasure and performance. Women in their 40s observed that they experienced orgasms more frequently when they were involved in more strenuous exercise. Men that reported more exercise hours per week had higher sexual function scores from a group of 178 healthy men. A key takeaway from this fitness article is, exercise can help improve sexual desire, function and performance in men and women. It can also help decrease the risk of erectile dysfunction in men.

Help with Relaxation and Sleep Quality

Sleep is the means by which your body heals your ruptured tissues, deals with hormones causing stress and anxiety. Proper sleep is essential to continue living a healthy life. Healthy in terms of physical as well as mental well-being. Exercising increases your body temperature and pushes you closer to achieving deep-sleep by allowing you to be able to have a deep sleep when you lie down and also helps to put your sleep pattern on track. A study shows that there is a 65% improvement in the quality of sleep with 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity. Another showed that 16 weeks of physical activity increased sleep quality and helped 17 people with insomnia sleep longer and more deeply. It also showed to help elderly suffering with insomnia to have better sleeping time.

Help Your Brain Health and Memory

Exercise improves your heart rate and promotes the flow of blood and oxygen to your brain, which potentially improves brain function, protect memory and thinking skills. It can also stimulate the production of hormones that can enhance the growth of brain cells. As our brain is affected by chronic diseases and the fact that exercise builds up your endurance for facing chronic diseases hence indirectly helping your brain. Hippocampus has been shown to be caused by exercise. Hippocampus is a part of the brain that is vital for memory and learning. This promotes higher mental function in older adults. Exercise has been shown to reduce changes in the brain that can cause Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

Can Help You Live Longer

It should be clarified beforehand that there is no magic formula that translates hours of physical activity into the time of life gained, but researches suggest that more active people tend to be healthier and hence live longer. Many studies have shown that consistent physical activity reduces the risk of premature mortality and increases life expectancy. The Lancet Medical Journal says that one in every 10 premature deaths are due to lack of exercise. Staying active helps delay or prevent chronic illnesses and diseases associated with ageing. So active adults maintain their quality of life and independence longer as they age. The American Heart Association estimates that about 250,000 deaths annually result from a lack of exercise. This almost equates to the average number of deaths that are due to smoking.

No More Excuses

Life is unpredictable, perhaps you have been busy starting a career or looking after your family or working towards something that requires all of you. Physical fitness may have moved to the bottom of the priority list but start now by setting reasonable goals. Begin with light activities that you enjoy and slowly build your endurance.

Encouragement might be needed when it comes to being active. So, the question lies, what is going to motivate you to move? Look for reasons that ultimately result in an active healthier you, such as:

• Improved mental health
• Better quality sleep
• Reduced anxiety
• Maintaining a healthy weight
• Being a positive role model for kids
• Decrease the risk of high blood pressure or Type-2 Diabetes
• Improved cholesterol levels
• Improved bone health
• Decreased risk of all-cause mortality