What Is Aerobic Exercise?
Aerobic exercise is any physical activity that makes you breathe harder and gets your heart beating faster than at rest. It makes you sweat and causes your blood to circulate oxygen to your muscles. Aerobic exercise is not just beneficial for the body. It is crucial for the proper functioning of your body and its health. It is, and we hope this goes without saying, a far greater alternative to something extreme. Walking briskly, jogging, cycling, and aerobic dancing are all examples of aerobic exercise. You need to maintain your activity for 30 minutes about five days a week.
The Benefits of Aerobic Exercise
1. Weight Loss – To control your weight, you need to do more than just eat a proper diet. You need to get aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise burns calories so that you can keep the weight off. It also affects your metabolism. This in turn affects how much weight you will lose.
2. Stress Reduction – Aerobic exercise helps relieve stress and anxiety. It increases concentrations of norepinephrine. This is a brain chemical that moderates the brain’s response to stress.
3. Endorphins – Exercise releases endorphins. This can help create feelings of happiness and euphoria. Studies have shown that exercise can help alleviate depression. Sometimes, exercise can even equal the effects of an antidepressant on your mood.
4. Boosting Self-Confidence – Aerobic exercise helps the appearance of your body. This can make you feel better about yourself and increase self-esteem. Also, you’ll feel better about your health, which also will boost your self-confidence.
5. Prevent Cognitive Decline – While exercise is not a cure for dementia or Alzheimer’s, it certainly can help increase the brain chemicals that prevent degeneration of the hippocampus. This part of the brain is involved in memory and learning.
6. Regulate Sleep – It is generally known that people who are inactive many times have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. Therefore, getting exercise can help alleviate the problem.
7. Reduce Your Risk of Disease – Cardiovascular exercise can help you reduce your risk of certain chronic and life-threatening diseases. These include coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers. Cardio increases your insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism. This can reduce your risk for developing type 2 diabetes.
8. Lowering Cholesterol – If you are overweight, then you might have high levels of LDL in your blood. This kind of cholesterol is linked to heart disease. Exercise will help you control your weight, in turn helping you to lower your LDL. Also, exercise stimulates enzymes that help move LDL from the blood to the liver.
The amount of exercise you need to lower cholesterol has been subject to some debate. Most public health organizations recommend that you get 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per day. Not only does the exercise lower LDL, but also it can raise HDL, the good kind of cholesterol.
9. Exercise and Immunity – Moderate exercise has been shown to help people against some illnesses. This is particularly the case with regard to illnesses that affect the upper respiratory tract. Too much exercise can have the opposite effect.
10, Exercise and Blood Pressure – Physical activity can help control your blood pressure. If your blood pressure is already high, then it can help reduce it. The reason that it helps with blood pressure is that exercise strengthens the heart. When the heart is stronger, it can pump the blood with less effort. This reduces blood pressure.
Cardio Exercise Versus Weight Training
With respect to weight loss, both cardio and strength training are necessary components. If you need to choose one over the other, however, you should choose the cardio. Cardio is necessary for burning the proper amount of calories, which directly influences weight loss. However, strength training does indirectly influence the amount of calories that you burn. The more muscle mass that you have as opposed to fat, the more calories that you will burn. With respect to whether one type of exercise should precede the other in your workout, it seems that it doesn’t really make any difference.
Is Walking Good Enough?
While walking has many of the same health benefits as running, research has suggested that running may be the best for weight loss. One study showed that when equal amounts of energy were expended, meaning that the walkers spent more time exercising, running still came out the victor with respect to weight loss.
If you are going to use walking as your source of aerobic exercise, it is wise to walk briskly. This will help make your heart work harder and make it into more of a cardiovascular exercise.
Running does have its downsides. It generally puts more stress on the body and increases the risk for various injuries. These can include knee problems, hamstring strains, and shin splints.
We have seen that cardio exercise is not only a good way to improve your overall health, but also it is crucial for your health. This includes both the mental and physical aspects of your health. You don’t need to join a gym to get cardio exercise, but some people find that it can help with their motivation. You can start your cardio by simply walking briskly for 30 minutes a day. This way, you have less risk of injuring yourself from running and other sports.