Benefits of being active

[Eugene]

Hi All,
Herr are some health benefits of being active.
Regular activity burns your calories and if you burn enough calories, you'll trim few pounds so stay active and you will keep the weight off. Being active improve blood glucose management and lower blood glucose and lower blood pressure. Being active makes your heart healthy, raise good cholesterol and lower bad cholesterol and triglycerides.Being active reduce stress, anxiety, and depression abd prevent from heart attack, cardiovascular disease, some cancers and bone loss.

[GianKarlo]

Keeping physically active is an important part of a healthy lifestyle. But unfortunately many of us feel we don't have the time or motivation to exercise regularly. Great resource !

[BioSattva]

YES! :

Cheer up. Here's how ...
The Guardian, Saturday 29 December 2007

3. Exercise regularly

More and more studies in the area of mind-body medicine show the mental health benefits of physical exercise. Michael Babyak and his colleagues at Duke University medical school, for example, showed that exercising three times a week for 30 minutes each time was as helpful for patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder as taking an antidepressant. Moreover, those who were on the drug were four times more likely to relapse once the intervention ended than those who exercised.

Is exercising, then, like taking an antidepressant? Not exactly. In essence, not exercising is like taking a depressant. We have the need for exercise, and when this need is not fulfilled, we pay a price. We were not made to be inactive, sitting in front of a computer all day. We were made to run after an antelope for lunch, or run away from a lion so that we don't become lunch. We frustrate a physical need when we don't exercise, and when we frustrate a need - of vitamins, proteins, or exercise - we pay a price for it. John Ratey, a Harvard medical school professor of psychiatry says that:

"In a way, exercise can be thought of as a psychiatrist's dream treatment. It works on anxiety, on panic disorder, and on stress in general, which has a lot to do with depression. And it generates the release of neurotransmitters - norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine - that are very similar to our most important psychiatric medicines. Having a bout of exercise is like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin, right where it is supposed to go."