You often hear it: exercising regularly is healthy! But how healthy exactly? And what does 'with regularity' mean? And what does 'sports' mean? Is that intensive jogging or is a walk sufficient?
Here is an answer to all these questions:
How healthy is exercise / exercise?
Spontaneously we think of a leaner and more muscular body and better stamina / condition. These are indeed important benefits, but it goes very much further than that. Below a number of advantages you probably never thought of:
-Sports lowers the bad (LDL) cholesterol and triglycerides in your blood; two major dangers for your cardiovascular system.Sports significantly reduces your risk of cardiovascular disease.
-Sports lowers your blood pressure
-By sports, your blood sugar level remains much easier to control; a huge health gain for all diabetics, pre-diabetics and anyone with an increased risk of diabetes.
-Sports strengthens your bones! Yes, not only calcium provides this. Sports makes a very important contribution to the firmness of your bones.
-Because you always strengthen your back muscles during exercise; helps to prevent back problems.
-Sports promotes the functioning of your intestines; a very interesting effect for those who often suffer from constipation.
-Sports increases your resistance and makes you less susceptible to infections.
-Sports reduce the risk of cancer
-Sports reduces your stress and increases your concentration: ideal to break your working day or study day with some movement during your lunch break: the stress of the morning falls away and in the afternoon you can concentrate much better, making you much more productive to be.
-Sport has many other mental benefits: it prevents depression, reduces your anxiety, increases your confidence and improves your mood.
-By sports you also improve your night's sleep.
-Sports even reduces your menstrual pain.
-And last but not least: sports prolong your life!
What do we mean by 'sports'? How long, how often and how intensively?
Do we now have to go to the gym for an hour every day? Not long!
You can already achieve all these positive effects by moving 'moderately intensively' for 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. Moderately intensive means that you sweat slightly and your breathing and heart rate slightly accelerate. This can already be done by walking hard, cycling to and from work, doing heavier housekeeping or gardening, dancing, ...
Or you can exercise intensively 3 times a week for 20 minutes. By intensive we mean that you sweat a lot and greatly increase your heart rate and breathing. This can be done, for example, by jogging, racing with the bike, fitness, ...
Remember that the health benefits are much greater if you indeed sport half an hour a week or more per week than when you sport once a week for 2 hours.
Convinced?
Are you convinced of all the advantages and do you want to do more exercise, but you can not manage on your own because you can not motivate yourself sufficiently or because you are physically limited by, for example, painful knees or a weak back? Then be accompanied by a movement coach. More information and testimonies about our movement coaching can be found here.