Studies have shown that physical activity is, quite obviously, one of the primary factors when evaluating a person’s overall health. Do you know why?
With the help of our nutrition team, we compiled a few of the most important benefits from regular exercise. They shared information on how regular physical activity can help almost all systems of the body, from your immune system to your blood and circulatory systems to your mental health. Exercise can also help you avoid physical injuries. Before we dive into the benefits of physical exercise, let’s cover what a fitness plan actually is.
What is a Fitness Plan?
Put simply, a fitness plan is a schedule of planned sessions of physical exercise. These sessions can be relaxed exercise, like a walk around the park, or it can be more strenuous, like interval training or resistance training.
Resistance/Anaerobic Training:
- Weight lifting and other similar activities
- Builds lean muscle mass and strength
- Increases/maintains testosterone levels
Cardiovascular/Aerobic Training:
- Can be strenuous (i.e. jogging) or more relaxed (i.e. walk in the park)
- Burns calories and helps you lose weight
- Regular cardio exercise can reduce likelihood of diabetes
Depending on your age, your exercise needs can differ drastically. Contact us today to schedule a nutritional evaluation so one of our nutritionists can create a custom fitness plan especially for you.
Exercise Habits and Insulin: Reduce Chances of Getting Diabetes
Exercise improves your body’s ability to tolerate carbohydrates, by enhancing the action of insulin. When exercising, your muscles pull blood sugar, or blood glucose, out of the blood and into your muscles. The more you exercise the less insulin you need to manage blood sugar levels. If you have less than normal insulin and glucose levels in your body, your body will limit the amount of carbohydrates converted into fat, which reduces fat storage and enhances fat burning. People with poor exercise habits have a greater risk of developing diabetes, where their body has difficulty utilizing and/or producing insulin. Learn more about diabetes here.
Lastly, exercise is not only beneficial to your muscles. The IGF-1 protein is released after exercise, and stimulates neurogenesis, or the formation of new neural connections in the brain. In addition to the neural benefit of this protein, it also stimulates muscle growth as well as enhancing the amount of oxygen delivered to the brain.
Decrease Risk of Disease
This is one of the greatest benefits of working out regularly. Just by working out, we can enhance our immune system and our brain health.
A few fitness experts have theorized that fitness plans can bolster your immune system due to the fact that you’re breathing harder than usual. Panting, or breathing harder than usual, can potentially flush pathogens out of our airways which reduces the chances for an infection to occur.
Also, in strenuous exercise, our bodies can enhance our lymphatic system. This system is a vital piece of your body’s circulatory and immune function. Since this system isn’t connected to the heart, it needs another source to supply the necessary “pumping” action to maintain its flow. Exercising regularly causes the your muscles to expand and contract, and this muscle movement one of the most effective ways to make sure your immune system is flushing out dangerous toxins and pathogens.
We typically see a lower white blood cell count when someone has completed a high intensity or long duration workout. Because of this, someone who just ran a marathon is much more likely to catch a cold than someone who only went for a light jog.
At the very minimum, we recommend that our patients incorporate at least 15-20 minutes of high intensity fitness or 30-45 minutes of low intensity fitness every day.
Avoid Physical Injuries
This might seem counterintuitive, as more active people might seem more likely to injure themselves during their exercise. While more active people are prone to accidental injuries, like a pulled muscle or a few blisters, they are improving their flexibility and strength. Because of this, physical exercise is especially good for our older patients.
If you are on a fitness plan, you are a lot less likely to fall or tweak something when reaching up on a shelf, for example. Day to day lot you are a lot less likely to have a physical injury if you exercise.
Creating a fitness plan is one of the best ways to be proactive on your health. Simply by exercising for 30 minutes to an hour each day, you can reduce your chances of getting cardiovascular diseases, injuries, diabetes, and much more.