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Why we need exercise Inactivity causes problems because our metabolism is geared to use the energy from the food we eat by being agile, mobile, on our feet, moving about most of the time.
If we are not, there is a great deal of surplus energy and without activity that surplus energy and without activity that surp0lus energy cannot be got rid of. It accumulates in the only way the body knows how, as fat. Think of a toddler. Toddlers are called toddlers because they6 “toddle” most of the time. They run around, they are never still. They rarely rest. The toddler is an example of the human body in an idea state and it’s an ideal state not just for two- and three-years-olds, but for as long as we live.
The Okinawans, the longest-living people on the planet, have proven it to be so. They are active for most of the day in various ways, though none involves a strenuous workout in the gym. They keep active with walking gardening, dancing and what we might call the “soft” martial arts like tai chi. They don’t do much jogging in the lunch hour or cycling in the afternoon, they just keep their bodies on the move for quite long periods each day, and that is all the body needs to defy age.
So the message is not more strenuous, high-impact exercise to prolong your life. It’s much more appealing – stay on your feet for as many hours as you can every day. Brisk walking is the nearest you have to get to a workout.
Exercise and mental wellbeing
Physical activity can boost both physical and mental wellbeing and change your outlook on life; it could even prevent problems starting in the first place. I know from personal experience that regular physical activity can lift your mood and hel0p you deal with negative emotions like anger and depression. It brings you a general sense of optimism and mental wellbeing as well as making you feel in good physical condition.
I’ve noticed that if I wake feeling a bit down, 30 minutes on my exercise bike cures the blues. That is because exercise floods my body with hormones that reduce tension levels and feelings of stress and fatigue. There is no time lag – these changes happen straight after a session, even though I don’t pedal that strenuously. No wonder I’m addicted to it, I can’t miss a single day.
Exercise makes you feel better about yourself
Exercise can make a huge difference to anyone suffering anxiety and low self-esteem and what’s more it has only good side effects. Studies have shown that people feel better about themselves once they start an exercise program.
Changes to body shape, as you begin to lose weight and feel your muscle tone getting better, improve your self-image, which can boost mental wellbeing. Exercise helps you to see just what you are capable of and gives you a sense of achievement. Learning a new skill or achieving a goal, however minor, boosts self-esteem and motivation.
Exercise is an antidepressant: both aerobic activity, such as brisk walking, running, or cycling, and resistance activity, such as using weights in a gym, van help people who have moderate to severe depression. The antidepressant effect of exercise is as powerful as some traditional forms of treatment such as physiotherapy and group therapy. More research needs to be done, but it does seem that physical activity can be used alongside other treatments for mental health problems.
Some people with anxiety disorders have found exercise as effective as remedies like meditation or relaxation exercises. Just one session of physical activity can bring temporary relief to stress and anxiety, and regular activity may have a long-term effect.
Exercise protects you from cancer
Physically active men and women have half the risk of getting colon cancer of their sedentary friends. The protection may be due to the favorable effect of exercise on insulin, prostaglandin and bile, all of which cause overgrowth of the colon lining. Exercise also speeds up bowel movements, cutting down the length of contact between faucal carcinogens and the colonic lining.
The hormones implicated in breast and uterine cancer are modulated by exercise. Studies show that activity can be responsible for a 30 per cent reduction in breast cancer rates and the more exercise you take, the greater the protection. So physical activity probably protects against cancer forming. And it may protect against recurrence and survival after a cancer has been detected.
The evidence is most compelling for colon and breast cancer, but moderate activity like walking and cycling should be part of everyone’s cancer-protection programme.
Exercise keeps your heart elastic.
You never know when you are going to call on your heart to perform in a superhuman way. If your heart has been allowed to become slack and fat as nay unfit muscle will, it will be able to respond in an emergency. You may be fortunate to get a warning sign – the chest pain of angina. But you may not and you could precipitate a heart attack. Exercise can make your heart fit enough to pull out the stops in more ways than one.
When you exercise, you increase the ability of your heart and lungs to adapt to any sudden increase in the work they have to do. This in itself goes a long way to compensate for the decline in heart function that occurs with age. Exercise opens up spare arteries to your heart muscle, ensuring that blood will reach the hard-working tissues, even if one of the arteries gets blocked off. In these two ways exercise can lower the risk of a heart attack. It also lowers your blood pressure, thereby reducing the risk of stroke.
Exercise controls your appetite
We all have something called the appestat, which is a switch in the brain telling us we’re full and should stop eating. All day long the appestat is bombarded with messages (chemical, electrical, hormonal, psychological) that turn it off and turn it on.
Exercise turns it on (STOP EATING!), and turns it on for as long as you exercise every day. The effects of this turn-on are both subtle and unsubtle. First of all you don’t feel hungry for an hour or so after exercising because exercise saps your blood sugar and your insulin levels are really flat (high insulin levels make you eat, low insulin levels do the opposite).
Because of this stabilization of blood sugar, but especially of insulin, t6he appestat (which is blunted by high blood sugar and insulin levels) becomes sensitive again. It starts to give you really early signals that you’re reaching satiety. That is the time to stop eating.
But the most subtle effect of exercise is on what it makes you choose to eat. When I was doing a cycle challenge through Israel, Jordan and Egypt, I found that I automatically reached for oranges, tomatoes (both vitamin C) and bread (complex carbohydrate) every time we stopped. I didn’t want protein, I didn’t want fat, I didn’t want sugar. My muscles were telling my brain what they needed. And my appestat was guiding my hand towards the fresh fruit and vegetables.
Exercise keeps the brain young and happy
Only five years ago it was thought that the brain couldn’t grow new brain cells, thanks to new research, the pessimists have been proven wrong, the discovery of neurogenesis – the creation of new nerve cells (neurones) – at the Salk Institute in California has opened many doors, including how to repair damaged brains by stimulating cell growth, so bringing meaner a cure for diseases such as stroke, Parkinsonism and even depression.
In animal experiments it’s been found that neurogenesis doubles when a mouse has a running wheel in it’s cage. It is possible that the increased blood flow carriers more growth factors into the brain, stimulating the growth of new brain cells. Another possibility is that running triggers a brain rhythm called theta rhythm, which is turn increases serotonin production – a known trigger for the growth of new brain cells, especially in the womb and in neonates.
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