WHY EXERCISE?
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Written by suphut
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Tuesday, 19 February 2008 |
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When you move your body vigorously, you bring oxygen to every cell. Exercise makes your skin glow and sometimes even makes pimples disappear as your circulation improves. Your reflexes become quicker. Exercise tones up your muscles, so that your body looks trimmer and more attractive. You become more graceful, because your joints learn to move through their whole range of motion. Exercise helps you achieve and maintain your ideal weight in a way that diet alone never can. And exercise helps control your appetite by increasing the amount of endorphins your brain secretes. (These recently discovered chemicals are often called "the brain's opium" because they tone down pain sensations, but they also prevent you from feeling hungry unless your body actually needs refueling.)
Exercise actually combats chronic fatigue by increasing your energy and your capacity for handling work. It brings extra oxygen to your brain, making you more alert during the day. But it also enables you to sleep more soundly at night because it produces sleep-inducing endorphins and releases the day's nervous tensions while making you physically tired (rather than washed out, the way inactive people feel). Exercise prevents depression not only by releasing nervous tension but by breaking down excess adrenaline and other stress-produced chemicals stored in your brain and heart. It also boosts your self-confidence and self-image by showing that you can improve yourself, no matter what your age or physical condition.
Exercise stimulates your digestion and helps with bowel function. It may encourage you to stop smoking, since nicotine cuts your wind. (Athletes also report that giving up cigarettes is easier when they exercise strenuously, because the extra oxygen they draw decreases their craving for tobacco. Many smokers, it seems, take drags on a cigarette as a way of inhaling extra oxygen.) Exercise helps prevent or eliminate varicose veins. It also speeds your recovery after surgery, because strong muscles have a greater capacity to use oxygen than flabby ones, and the more oxygen they get, the faster they heal. (Many hospitals now put prospective chest and abdominal surgery patients on an exercise program several weeks before a scheduled operation.)
You may decide to exercise because it relaxes you or raises your spirits. Tests by M. A. Carmack and R. Martens show that people who run for these reasons tend to be more highly committed and to feel they are getting more benefits than people who exercise only because someone said it was good for them. Or you may play sports because it is an excuse to get out of the house or office, to see old friends and make new ones.
Everyone should find her own compelling reason for exercising. One New York woman whose close friend was mugged spent a year lifting weights and studying karate for self-defense. Another woman decided to conquer her tension backaches by swimming a mile and a half five days a week and doing special calisthenics to 'strengthen her abdominal and back muscles. Yet another woman read an article about women body builders in a sports magazine and decided to train in order to enter a local body-building contest. (After only nine weeks of full-time training and dieting, she won second prize for the overall competition as well as first place in four trophy events.)
You are never too old or infirm to exercise, or even to compete. Most Ys and national sports associations have masters' programs for people middle-aged or older. Where necessary, these competitions are age graded so that sixty-year-old swimmers or gymnasts, for example, are not competing against thirty-year-olds. Many of these programs contribute teams to the Senior Olympics, held each year in various locations around the country.Several organizations promote athletics for people with chronic illnesses or handicaps. For more information, contact the organizations listed in Appendix A or your local chapter of the association devoted to research and education specializing in your problem.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 25 February 2008 )
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