We’re a broken record on this. You’ve got to exercise most days of the week to stay healthy and ward off depression. If that’s not enough to motivate you, here are five more ways exercise benefits us, courtesy of Prevention magazine.
•First, and possibly importantly, you’ll live longer. People who exercise rigorously have longer telomeres. What are telomeres? They’re a piece of your DNA that’s responsible for how quickly your cells regenerate – and as you age, your telomeres get shorter. However, people who exercise have longer telomeres, get fewer diseases and live longer.
•Next, exercise helps keep your brain intact. Yes, exercise can lower the risk of Alzheimer’s in older people, but if you’re not near retirement age – exercise can still help prevent brain fog in younger people. In a study, Japanese researchers separated a group of couch-potato 20-year olds into two groups – one took aerobics classes and the other group didn’t. After four months, MRIs showed that the non-exercisers had experienced shrinkage in gray matter in some areas of the brain. Those who worked out had no changes.
•Another benefit of exercise is that it reduces inflammation. Chronic inflammation is a major factor in the formation of blood clots that block the blood flow to your heart. When sedentary, obese women in their 50s started working out, they lowered their levels of chronic inflammation by 10% in just a year.
•Exercise can also be a key in helping people survive breast cancer. Exercise not only reduces your risk of getting breast cancer, it can also help you survive if you get it. Overweight women who were exercising more than three hours a week before they were diagnosed were almost 50 percent less likely to die than those who exercised less before the diagnosis.
•Finally, exercise can help you stop smoking. In a recent study, researchers found that smokers were less interested in smoking after spending 15 minutes on an exercise bike than they were when they weren’t exercising.
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