Month: August 2021

The Health Benefits of Regular Exercise

The benefits of exercise may sound too good to be true, but decades of solid science confirm that exercise improves health and can extend your life. Adding as little as half an hour of moderately intense physical activity to your day can help you avoid a host of serious ailments, including heart disease, diabetes, depression, and several types of cancer, particularly breast and colon cancers. Regular exercise can also help you sleep better, reduce stress, control your weight, brighten your mood, sharpen your mental functioning, and improve your sex life. A well-rounded exercise program has four components: aerobic activity, strength training, flexibility training, and balance exercises. Each benefits your body in a different way.

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A Runner’s Heart is:

1. Bigger – An endurance athlete’s heart can be up to 50 per cent bigger than a non-athlete’s heart.
2. Can pump more blood around the body – The atria, the upper two ‘filling chambers’ where blood arrives in the heart, are enlarged, as are the ventricles, the two lower chambers that pump blood around the body.
3. Has more flexible coronary arteries – The vessels that supply blood to the muscles of the heart are able to expand more to allow more blood flow during exercise even when there are some cholesterol deposits. This ability to dilate makes it easier for blood to get around any partial blockages.
4. Has wider, more abundant coronary capillaries – The secondary network of vessels that distribute blood to muscles of the heart may be two to three times bigger than normal.
5. Has denser plaques in arteries – dense plaques may be less likely to rupture and cause a heart attack. Emerging evidence suggests that plaques in runners, too, may be denser and more stable.

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