No More Excuses

The weather is nice again, the daylight hours are longer, and the excuses to put off exercising are running thin.  Exercise is well known to decrease pain, reduce stress, improve immune function, boost the brain, lower blood pressure, improve cardiac function, lower risk of cancer, boost energy, improve sleep and maintain body weight.  If there were a pill that did all this, they couldn’t charge enough for it or be able to keep it on the shelves.  But exercise is available to all of us and it’s free!

Perhaps you just need a little more motivation.  A 2005 study showed that ten months of moderate exercise was more effective in decreasing depression than prescription anti-depressants; cutting depression symptoms over 50%.  In 2001, researchers concluded that people with the highest level of physical activity were half as likely to develop Alzheimer’s or dementia.  In 2005 they found that women who had already had breast cancer and exercised 3-5 hours per week were half as likely to die from the disease as those who were inactive.  Exercisers typically fall asleep a half hour faster and get an extra hour of quality sleep.  In a 2002 diabetes study they found that those who exercised had double the results in controlling blood sugar as those who were taking a medication for diabetes.  A 1997 study done in nursing homes found that those who participated in lifting weights for two months tripled their walking speed and improved their balance by half.  The simple fact is that regardless of your age and current level of health, you are not as good as you could be if you were exercising more.

There are more options and opportunities in this area than ever before with exercise.  My only advice is to plan out your time in advance and commit to something you actually enjoy because a different study showed that forced exercise that people did not like actually had a negative effect by increasing their stress level.