11 Amazing Ways Aerobic Exercise Can Improve Your Health & Increase Your Lifespan

When we exercise aerobically, our muscles demand more oxygen and blood than when we're just reading a book or watching television. To fill the demand, our hearts beat faster and stronger, and we start to breathe more heavily. It's like a low-risk investment that yields tremendous profits. Here are some of the immediate benefits of exercise.

1. Boosts energy. The next time you're falling asleep at your desk, go out and take a brisk 10 to 15 minute walk. Chances are that you'll feel refreshed and energized when you return. You feel like your energy level is really surging. Your brain releases feel-good chemicals called endorphins, the same ones that, in excess, create the "runner's high" that marathon runners often experience.

2. Boosts metabolism. Aerobic exercise burns a lot of calories and elevates metabolism Metabolism is so important because it's what helps us control our weight. As it slows, so does our body's ability to use up the calories we eat before they're converted to fat, Exercise for at least 30 minutes every day, and maintain or even lose weight by giving your metabolism a daily boost.

3. Reduces stress and makes falling asleep easy. Studies show that exercise is a great stress buster. Aerobic exercise can improve your sleep by reducing stress, tiring you out, and regulating your body temperature. The best time to exercise for improved sleep is in the late afternoon, according to experts Peter Hauri, PhD., co-director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The body goes through a cycle of rising and falling temperatures throughout the day. When your temperature is at its lowest point, its easiest for you to fall asleep. Vigorous exercise in the afternoon can boost your body temperature for up to 5 hours, so your temperature will drop just in time for bed.

4. Revs up your sex drive. Exercise may give your libido a turbo-boost. Experts say that aerobic exercise can put the sizzle back in your sex life by reducing stress. When we're more relaxed, we're often more interested in having sex. Exercise can also make you feel better about your body as you find yourself becoming more fit. The more attractive we feel, the friskier we usually are. Exercise has also been found to boost the levels of the hormone responsible for sex drive in men, and that effect may be similar in women.

While the immediate benefits of aerobic exercise may be remarkable, its long-term benefits are even more impressive. Regular exercise increases your vitality, endurance, flexibility, and balance, all things that tend to decline as we age. But the most significant benefit of exercise is its role in disease prevention. If you look at a list of all the health problems that occur as you age, exercise has been shown to reduce almost all of them. Here are just some of the conditions exercise can counteract.

5. Heart disease. Regular aerobic exercise helps prevent heart disease by improving several risk factors: It lowers blood pressure and cholesterol, controls weight, reduces stress, and improves cardiovascular fitness, says Elizabeth Ross, M.D., a cardiologist at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. Even people who already have heart disease can lower their risk of having a heart attack by exercising.


6. Cancer. Women who exercise several times a week cut their breast cancer risk to half that of inactive women, while those who did more vigorous activity such as swimming or running at least once a week were 80% less likely to get breast cancer. When it comes to colon cancer, in 1996 the Surgeon General's report concluded that physical activity protects against it.

7. Diabetes. People who exercise regularly have a significantly lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. A 6-year study of more than 8,600 subjects, conducted by researchers at the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas, found that those who were least fit had four times greater risk of developing diabetes than those who were most fit.

8. Stroke. Regular exercise can cut your stroke risk in half, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health.

9. Depression. Experts say that exercise can help relieve mild depression by raising levels of feel-good substances in the brain and by reducing stress. In fact, several studies have shown that aerobic exercise is just as effective as psychotherapy at treating mild depression.

10. Osteoporosis. Regular exercise can help prevent osteoporosis. A study of nearly 240 postmenopausal women between the ages of 43 and 72 found that those who walked about a mile a day had denser bones than women who walked less than a mile a week.

11. Arthritis. Exercise, especially walking, can ease arthritis pain. A study at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, assigned elderly people with knee arthritis to do aerobic exercise, strength training, or no exercise. After a year, those who did best were in the aerobic exercise group. They reported less pain and disability than the nonexercise group and were able to walk, climb stairs, and get in and out of the car more easily.