The benefits of exercise

If you could turn the positive effects of exercise into a pill that would be the most effective, the most sought after and the most marketable drug in the world. I know that this is an extraordinary statement right off the bat, but I stand behind these words and I will explain why in the following paragraphs.

First on the long list of benefits is one that is often forgotten when we talk about exercise and its positive effects. We are talking about mood-changing effects. One study in the U.S. demonstrated that jogging 3 times a week was equally effective as Zoloft which is a powerful antidepressant. In numerous other studies we have seen larger levels of secretion of hormones serotonin and dopamine and you can probably tell what kind of effect that has on someone’s mood. If you’re going through a rough patch, struggling with depression or anxiety, the best solution might actually be exercise. I had the chance to read through many personal accounts of former sufferers of depression. Most of them attribute their recovery success to exercise which helped them get off the medication. Obviously, there are serious problems with relying on subjective accounts of people but it can at least serve as an indication that exercise contributed to the solution of their problems.

The second benefit I’d like to tackle is cognitive performance. Namely, physical activity helps improve brain function which manifests as improved learning ability and improved memory. One study on students with a huge sample size showed that physically active students had much higher grade averages. Another study showed that exercise can be beneficial for learning if done before studying.

The third effect is a long-term one and that is the slowing of the aging process and especially when it comes to mitigating brain function deterioration. Given the fact that there are so many studies on this that it would take me 3 full texts to explain them, I will conclude the paragraph here.

If you think that the effects of exercise might show up on the scale, you might be wrong. I say might because some types of physical activity will help you gain muscle which will increase your weight. That is why the scale might not be the most reliable tool to measure success of exercise, but that does not negate the effect exercise has on body composition. If you remember the story about calories you will immediately realize that physical activity is one of the four major components of calorie expenditure. An interesting benefit of physical activity is that it allows you to eat more whilst still remaining in a calorie deficit and losing weight. Another way in which exercise helps increase your food intake is through the increase of muscle mass and that is because muscles are “energetically expensive” meaning that your body requires more energy in order to function. On top of all of that, exercise helps with bone density and general bone health.

In order to avoid text length issues, I am going to group a bunch of benefits into this last category: improved sleep quality, better recovery, reduced stress levels through cortisol regulation, decreased risk of heart attack and stroke, better insulin sensitivity, exercise also aids with skin health and chronic pain.

The list does not end here but I think that this is more than enough to support my claim from the beginning. If we take all of the benefits mentioned above into consideration – why wouldn't you choose to exercise?