Health is Wealth: Health Alert

The Benefits of Exercising

Most people know that exercise is important for weight loss and preventing heart disease, and there are a wide range of other scientifically proven benefits to exercising daily. Whether you like to walk, jog, bike, swim, or play an active sport, you can improve your health by maintaining a regular exercise regimen. Twenty minutes a day, three times a week can be enough to improve your health.

Exercise is fundamentally important to losing weight because it is the best way to burn calories, which are simply a unit of energy. Eating less and exercising more is the formula for losing weight. An individual who consumes 2000 calories without using any energy will gain over half a pound of stored body fat. To lose a pound you must burn 3500 more calories than you consume. While this may sound intimidating, it can be easy to add twenty or thirty minutes of exercise, three or four times a week to lose weight and enjoy many other health benefits.

Thirty minutes of walking burns around 200 calories. Adding a thirty minute walk, three times a week to one’s normal lifestyle, and not changing anything else, will burn over 30,000 calories in a year which is nearly nine pounds. A single hour of walking, three times a week over the course of a year can generate close to twenty pounds of weight loss.

Exercise is necessary for the prevention of heart of heart disease. It can reduce blood pressure by causing the endothelial cells to produce sufficient amounts of Nitric Oxide. This relaxation effect reduces pressure. In addition, the Nitric Oxide generated reduces the build of arterial plaque, thereby reducing the occurrence of stroke and heart attacks. Cholesterol levels are also known to benefit from regular exercise such as walking.