HEALTH MOTIVATION : IMPACT OF REGULAR EXERCISE ON OUR HEALTH

Various studies have shown conclusively that physical inactivity leads to many health problems. The sedentary lifestyle of growing number of people of all strata of society including large number of white collar employees across industries and businesses is a serious cause of concern. The so-called modern lifestyle actually makes the life of several million Indians devoid of even minimum amount of physical activity absolutely necessary to keep this unique machine called human body going. The growing dependence on technology in some way or the other has also been contributing its share to make a crippling effect on the lives of large population of our youth.

A recent medical study has revealed that sitting for longer hours in office or home before the Computer or TV or with laptop or engaged with your smart phone or such electronic gadgets can definitely raise the chances of all types of major diseases and then even 30 minutes of exercise every day may not be sufficient. As such, longer duration of daily exercise would be necessary to keep you fit. 

To be more precise, physical inactivity or lack of physical exercise is known to affect badly our muscles, heart, lungs, kidney, bones, joints, brain and digestive system which lead finally to indisposition of some kind or the other in quicker intervals. Besides weakening the immune system of our body significantly, it impacts our monthly budget to a reasonable extent as we are forced to incur avoidable expenses towards doctor’s fee, medicine and at times hospitalisation as well.

It is interesting to know that moderate to intense exercise including simple brisk walking for some time also acts as a mood booster and also a de-stressing tool. It improves your self-image as well.

So, what should one do to keep the body healthy and going?

Starting the day with a few minutes of warm up session is widely recommended by health experts. It is necessary for loosening your muscles as they become stiff while resting for couple of hours in the night. This is needed to be rightly ready for intense exercise or work-out. If for any reason, you are not going out for a walk, you may very well do spot running and other free hand exercises for a few minutes, may be ten to fifteen  minutes. This should be done on an empty stomach preferably during morning hours.

It is needless to emphasise that even this kind of simple routine exercise confers many benefits like better exercise tolerance, lower body weight, lower blood pressure, better control of blood sugar, lowered cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. It also contributes significantly towards reduced stroke risk, reduced risk of cancer of all types, lesser incidence of viral infections and lowered risk of depression. Not only this, regular dose of physical work out and exercise in many ways keeps our physique in right shape and also ensures a better sleep in the night.

Hence, the standard medical advice has been to recommend exercise duration ranging from 20-40 minutes a day, if not possible for all the days of the week, for at least four to five days in a week. Undoubtedly, if done daily, it is still better. Studies have shown that benefits of lowered blood pressure due to exercise disappears if one stops the activity for more than two weeks. It is because exercise helps decrease the level of LDL (Low Density Lipoprotein, commonly known as bad cholesterol) and enhance the level of HDL (High Density Lipoprotein, also known as good cholesterol) in our blood. 

Before signing off, I'm tempted to share this quote of John F. Kennedy :

" Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity."

As always, I'm keen to know what do you think on this subject. Hence, request you to post comments to share your views and experiences.

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