Exercise Boosts Your Overall Health
You know exercise is good for you. Regular exercise makes you stronger and helps you feel better. Regular exercise helps:
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Control your weight
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Reduce physical and mental stress
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Improve digestion
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Sharpen your mental acuity and ability to concentrate
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Strengthen the cardiovascular system
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Lubricate joints
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Strengthen your heart
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Improve mineral uptake in the skeleton
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Lower your cholesterol and triglyceride levels
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Increase your circulation
Besides boosting your overall wellness, a regular fitness program can cut your risks of developing diabetes, breast and colon cancer, osteoporosis, kidney disease, high blood pressure, and arthritis. If you strengthen your immune system, you will be less likely to suffer from other illnesses or disorders.
While most people know that exercise offers overall health benefits, most people don’t know that it’s good for your digestive tract, too. In fact, the World Gastroenterology Organization (WGO) released new digestive health guidelines and included regular exercise as essential.
Regular exercise stimulates intestinal muscles to contract, which causes them to push more food through the system. Even very gentle exercise works the muscles of the bowel, triggering peristalsis (the contractions of the colon that move food along the GI tract) and helps the colon to return to a pattern of normal contractions.
Exercise can help relieve constipation, reduce the risk of colon cancer, and help the body better absorb nutrients. As an added benefit, you may even feel better while you exercise. During exercise, the bowel typically quiets down. Exercise helps gas pass through the digestive tract quicker, so you feel better faster. Besides relieving digestive problems, exercise can also help prevent obesity, indigestion, and diverticulosis.
And you don’t have to be in shape to benefit. One study of 1,801 men and women found obese people who got some form of physical activity were less likely to suffer GI problems than inactive obese people.
If exercise is so important for digestive health, why didn’t my doctor suggest it?Many doctors don’t mention lifestyle changes if, in their experience, few of their patients actually make changes, a phenomenon known as poor patient adherence. Doctors do agree that regular exercise is low-risk and helps promote your overall health.
Because exercise is effective in reducing stress, it should also help you with digestive symptoms related to anxiety and tension. When you exercise, your brain releases endorphins, a neurotransmitter sometimes called the “happiness chemical.” Endorphins are natural painkillers and antidepressants, so whether you are emotionally hurting or in physical pain, exercise can help. Exercise also helps to balance serotonin, another feel-good hormone. When you exercise you feel better, stronger, healthier, and you have more self-confidence.
One really useful strategy is to keep an exercise log for a couple of days, similar to a food diary. Write down what you do: how often you walk, how far and how fast, how much time you spend seated—in your job, behind the wheel, or in front of the computer or television—and what physical exercise you get as part of your daily life, such as housework, gardening, or playing with kids.
Add up the total amount of time you spend being active, and the time you spend sitting. Guidelines vary, but you should raise your heartbeat for at least twenty minutes, a minimum of three times per week—these are minimums. Most physicians suggest doing some sort of aerobic exercise for thirty minutes a day; that could mean as little as two brisk fifteen-minute walks daily.
Because exercise helps relieve tension and stress, improves blood circulation, and acts as a mood stabilizer, women who suffer from PMS will also find that exercise helps eliminate or relieve many PMS symptoms.
