Exercise, by far, is one of the most important factors that affect a person’s well being. Not only does regular exercise benefit our physical well-being, but it also plays a vital role in enhancing and stimulating social, mental and emotional health as well.

In general, exercise refers to exerting effort through our body to do activities that would result to the improvement of our health and promotion of a healthier level of fitness – both physically and mentally. It therefore aims to not only improve our physical fitness, also our overall health too.

The intensity of exercise that is to be performed by an individual is dependent on how much he or she can endure. Three intensities are normally considered which includes light exercise, consisting of simple tasks like walking; moderate exercise, or tasks that makes you slightly out of breath like biking, taking the stairs, or walking fast; and vigorous forms of exercise, or exercise that makes you pant when performed like running and heavy weight training. Depending on a person’s capabilities, it is important to perform regular exercise in order to avoid the pitfalls of living a sedentary lifestyle.

Dangers of a Sedentary Lifestyle

A sedentary lifestyle is a term synonymous to living an inactive lifestyle, or those with no or irregular physical activities. It may sound surprising for some, but one of the major signs that you are living a sedentary lifestyle is prolonged hours of sitting around, whether you are watching television or in front of the computer. A sedentary lifestyle results to muscle inactivity that is linked with the increased risk of diabetes, obesity, cancer and heart disease.

A study conducted by the University of Hong Kong and the Department of Health reported in the South China Morning Post that people who are following a sedentary lifestyle are in more danger of death, as compared to people who are smoking. The study stated that people with certain diseases living a sedentary lifestyle also increases their risk of death than sick people with an active life.

Stay fit, Stay healthy

A new study published in Cell’, a publication of the Cell Press, in its December 23rd issue indicated molecular-level reports on how exercise particularly influences the heart. The study on mice showed a genetic program being turned on, where heart muscles divide and results to the growing of the heart, when exercise is being performed. It seems that a transcription factor (gene that takes control of other genes) is the result in the change in activity. The gene, known as C/EBPb, was seen to perform vital role on other body parts. However, this was the first study to show its influence to the heart.

Bruce Spiegelman of Harvard Medical School said that they have identified a pathway involving a good heart growth called cardiac hypertrophy. Other researchers also said that the results of the study may have certain effects especially to those people with disease that makes exercise difficult to perform, like heart failure and other diseases. Anthony Rosenzweig of Harvard Medical School also said that this provides more reason to continue exercise. In the long run of observing the pathways of how exercise benefits the heart, they may be able to utilize this to patients who could not do the same. The authors said that it would also open up new rooms for treatment if there was a way to adjust that pathway in a useful way.

It has been long known by the researchers that the more the size of the heart increases, the more the heart muscle adjusts to the increasing pressure and volume. That’s true for cases that require exercise. However, in cases that opposes it, it may result to arrhythmias and heart failure.

The researchers aimed to understand these differences more through methods conducted in the Spiegelman Lab that made it possible for them to measure the changes of expression in the transcription factors in both mice with exercise, and mice with surgically constricted aortas, a treatment that helps increase heart size. Changes of about 175 transcription factors were found in exercise mice and 96 with aorta-constricted mice. A transcription factor C/EBPb, which goes down two-fold by exercise, was zeroed by the researchers. Studies in certain animals have shown results of increase in heart muscle size and the like in consistent endurance exercises. The study also showed heart failure resistance in mice with lower C/EBPb levels.

According to the researchers, the findings were the key to prove that exercise has direct benefits to the heart and also for the potential of the heart for muscle regeneration.

Health Benefits of Exercise

Performing exercise regularly gives you innumerable amounts of health benefits. Some of which are as follows:

• Reduce risk of Cancer – In a study by researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, those who were active were 21% less likely to develop cancer, especially cancers of the digestive tract, than those who are less active, maybe because it helps remove waste quickly through bowel movement.
  
  
• Fragility and Osteoporosis – Weak bones and muscles are a result of the lack of exercise. A new study conductedby German researchers enrolled women 65 years and older to an 18 month exercise program. Results showed that the participants have increased their bone density and had a reduced risk of falling.
  
  
• Cardiovascular Diseases – In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. JoAnn E. Manson and her colleagues, 73,743 women ages 50 to 79 who were initially healthy and who started walking briskly for 30 minutes in 5 days together with vigorous exercise showed a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and heart attack.
  
  
• Diabetes – Risk of diabetes has been proven to be reduced even when just performing moderate activity. According to a 16-year study on 68,907 healthy nurses, those who were sedentary have twice the risk of developing diabetes and those who were sedentary have 16 times the risk, compared to those who were active.
  
  
• Dementia – The ability of exercise to delay loss of cognitive functions is probably one of its greatest benefits. In a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in Australia, 170 volunteers with memory malfunctions underwent a six-month physical activity program. After a year and a half, the exercise group developed “modest improvement cognition”. Other studies have also shown the value of exercise in maintaining the cognitive functions of older people.

Sources
nytimes.com
healthandage.com
naturalnews.com
medicalnewstoday.com
eurekalert.org