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A physical benefit to regular exercise is lowering or raising blood pressure to a healthy level. The unhealthy high for blood pressure is 120 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) and the low is 80 mm Hg. Exercise makes your heart stronger and therefore pumps blood through your veins much easier, causing blood pressure to return to a stable level. Once regular exercise is started, it takes approximately 1-3 months for exercise to benefit blood pressure levels. Exercise should be 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise and 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise each week. Aerobic, along with, resistance training, can cause great benefits for your heart and blood pressure (Mayo Clinic Staff).
Though it hasn’t been proven, there are multiple theories that suggest exercise creates a stronger immune system. While exercising, airways are opened due to more rapid breathing; therefore bacteria is flushed out preventing certain sicknesses. Another theory is that exercise circulates disease-fighting antibodies and white blood cells (WBC) throughout the body. WBC could detect bacteria much earlier resulting in the illness being fought off sooner. Similar to how a fever affects the body, exercise increases body temperature causing bacteria growth to stop. Lastly, many illnesses begin with stress and exercise prevents stress hormones from spreading throughout the brain (“Exercise and Immunity”).
Besides muscle growth and weight loss, regular exercise can have many benefits for bone health. As people get older, their bones can become more fragile, making it much easier to break them. To prevent this from occurring, children should start exercising at a young age to increase bone density and strength. The two key exercises for this to occur are weight-bearing exercises and strength-training exercises. Weight-bearing exercises are those where your muscles and bones work against gravity, such as running, jump-roping, or basketball. Strength-training exercises are done with weight machines, free weights, and body holding exercises that create stronger muscles and bones due to resistance of movements. All of these exercises positively affect your bones by creating growth and strength for years to come (Campbell and Fischer).
The majority of people are declared obese if their Body Mass Index (BMI) is higher than 30. With this, doctors recommended an excessive amount of exercise and a strict diet to lose weight. More recently, those who are overweight have declared that there are greater benefits in exercise, besides weight loss. There are many examples of obese women and men who have taken this belief into their own hands and worked to spread it to other people. An overweight fitness instructor, Ms. DePatie has written a book, along with critiquing negative body image articles. DePatie has found that she gets sick less often, sleeps better, and is usually in better moods because of exercising. A UCLA study found that it isn’t likely that a person trying to lose weight will keep that weight off. Therefore, it is more beneficial to simply exercise without the main goal of losing weight (Bachman).
Here is a short video by the British Heart Foundation, explaining physical exercise further.
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