6 Amazing Benefits of Regular Exercise & Physical Activity

Exercise makes you happy: This is a fact that’s been a little more talked about lately, but exercise can lift your mood-and sustain it- about as effectively as anti-depressants. It’s a healthier and more natural way to reduce symptoms of depression, and isn’t going to have the nasty side-effects of other forms of treatment. Just getting outside for a half an hour walk a day is enough to lift your spirits and pump endorphins, but to get the most out of it research suggests burning 350 calories a week through sustained, sweat-inducing activity is the place to start.

How it works: Exercise stimulates the growth of neurons in the specific regions of the brain that are affected by depression, be it diagnosed or just feeling blue. It can also help boost the brain chemical GABA, which translates to improving mood and lowering anxiety.

Exercise boosts energy: Have you ever noticed that exercising invigorates you, but if you lie in bed all day you feel sluggish and sick? It seems a bit counterintuitive that burning energy would give you energy, but it’s one of the best ways to increase it.

How it works: Regular physical activity improves your muscle strength, and increases your endurance (hence why you find yourself winded going up the stairs if you never work out.) It sends oxygen’s and all kinds of good nutrients to your tissues and helps your cardiovascular system work more efficiently, and when your heart has energy, so do you.

Exercise improves sex life: If you’ve found that you’re just not really ever in the mood, or too tired to enjoy physical intimacy, chances are exercise will put the spark back into your sex life. Regular physical activity will boost energy and make you feel better about the way you look-both of which have positive effects when it comes to your desire to heat things up a bit. It also enhances arousal for women and boosts testosterone in men, as well as minimizing their risk of them developing erectile dysfunction.

How it works: Exercise has been shown to enhance arousal for women, probably due to a combination of better circulation, an improved mood, and being more satisfied with physical appearance.  Men who exercise regularly are less likely to have problems with erectile dysfunction than men who don’t exercise because it improves and maintains circulation and blood flow (and they are happier with how they look too.)

Exercise will help you sleep better: Exercise gives you energy, and it helps you fall asleep, stay asleep, and sleep better, and therefore it also helps you restore it. Don’t exercise too close to bedtime though, or you may be too jazzed up to go to sleep.

How it works: Exercise works your mind and body and therefore makes you tired (after you’ve been rejuvenated by it.) You sleep better, and deeper, and when you wake up you’re more refreshed than ever.

Exercise improves learning: Having trouble picking up a new skill or grasping a concept in class? When you exercise your body you’re getting a brain boost that can help you learn better, with the best results from more “complicated” activates, such as dance class.

How it works: Physical activity increases brain chemicals called growth factors. Growth factors are what help create new brain cells and establish new connections between existing brains cells, which help us learn.

Exercise works your mind: When you work out you’re improving mind function, as well as body function. Regular activity, even less intense things like gardening or taking short walks, helps ward off memory loss and retain vocabulary retrieval skill.

How it works: Exercise is just as physiologically beneficial as it is physically. It increases the brains plasticity, or ability to adapt and change, which enhances things like blood flow and neuronal resistance to injury, specifically in the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain crucial for learning and memory storage.