How does physical activity benefit your health?

Physical activity is anything that helps improve or maintain your physical fitness and health. This could include going for a run, playing a sport, or doing household chores.

It can include:

• Everyday activities . For example, walking or cycling to work or school, doing housework, gardening, DIY around the house, or any active or manual work that you may do as part of your job.
• Active recreational activities . This includes activities such as dancing, active play amongst children, or walking or cycling for recreation.
• Sport . For example, exercise and fitness training at a gym or during an exercise class, swimming and competitive sports such as football, rugby and tennis, etc.

What happens to your body when you exercise?

There are two main types of activity: -cardiovascular: Anything that gets your heart rate up and makes you breathe heavier. -Resistance: Anything that works your muscles and makes you stronger. The type of yoga you do will determine the effects it has on your body.

Cardiovascular activity

Exercise is anything that gets your heart rate up, including walking, running, swimming, dancing, and cycling, as well as sports like football and tennis, or everyday activities like cleaning or gardening.

Cardiovascular activity results in an increased heart rate, which pumps more blood, oxygen and nutrients to the cells and tissues around the body, especially the muscles being used for movement. Your breathing will quicken during cardiovascular activity in order to take in more oxygen.

This means that your heart and lungs are working together to pump oxygen-rich blood to your muscles during exercise. The majority of cardiovascular activities require the heart and lungs to work together to pump oxygen-rich blood to the muscles during exercise. Breaking down sugars with oxygen releases the energy you need. You can do cardiovascular activity for a long time, depending on how hard you work and how fit you are.

You can also do short, intense exercises without using oxygen. Examples of these exercises are sprints, where your body burns energy. Periods of recovery are necessary in order to catch your breath.

Resistance or strength activity

You need to do activities that involve pushing, pulling, or holding against something that offers resistance, such as weights, resistance bands, gravity, or your own body. Resistance training is a type of strength training that is known to be more intense than cardiovascular activity. This type of training helps to build endurance and muscle strength.

Some activities that involve resistance or strength are lifting weights, doing pushups, yoga, and Pilates. or doing yard work that involves lifting, such as raking or bagging leaves. You can also build your strength by doing daily activities that involve lifting heavy objects, such as lifting your kids or doing yard work.

When you perform strength exercises, you expose your muscle fibres to stress, which tears your muscles. While this might sound bad, it’s actually good because it causes new muscle growth. As your body repairs the tears in your muscles, you gradually build stronger and bigger muscles that are able to lift heavier weights.

There are many activities that provide a mix of both cardiovascular and resistance, such as walking or lifting heavy weights.

Strength is also particularly important as you age. Being strong means that we can do everyday tasks more easily, and we can stay independent for a longer time. Stronger muscles also help reduce our risk of falls and fractures.

How does physical activity benefit your health?

Cardiovascular exercise is beneficial for overall fitness by improving the function of the heart and lungs. In addition to its benefits for weight loss, resistance or strength training also builds muscle and boosts your metabolism in the long term. Physical activity has a broad range of benefits for both mind and body.

The benefits of physical activity, especially aerobic exercise, are many and varied. They include improving cardiovascular function and reducing blood pressure, regulating blood sugar levels, and building muscle strength.

In the long term, making these changes could help you stay healthy. There are many long-term health benefits associated with regular physical activity, including reducing the risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer.

Regular physical activity could also help to protect you from infectious diseases by making your immune system stronger. Regular physical activity has been known to increase the amount of protective antibodies and immune cells, therefore resulting in a decreased chance of getting an infection. According to studies, vaccinations may be more effective when combined with physical activity.

After a workout, many of us feel happier due to the increased endorphins. When you workout, your body releases “happy hormones” known as endorphins.

Stress and depression can be greatly improved with regular physical activity, as well as overall mental wellbeing. The review found that being physically active can lead to higher levels of wellbeing and quality of life, as well as lower symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress.

How much physical activity should you do?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to how much physical activity adults should do every day, as recommendations vary by country. However, most experts agree that some amount of physical activity is beneficial for all adults.

The NHS in the UK recommends doing some strength-training exercises at least twice a week, plus 2.5 hours of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise such as brisk walking, biking, or dancing. You could also do 1.25 hours of vigorous-intensity activity like running, mountain biking or swimming each week. The HHS in the US has also released similar guidelines.

Although going to the gym is a great way to get active, it’s not the only way to get physically fit. There are many other activities that contribute to a person’s overall physical fitness. The most important thing is to find something you enjoy and that you can manage.

Physical activity can be anything that gets you moving, such as walking, gardening, carrying the shopping, or even cleaning. Dancing, swimming, martial arts, and participating in sports are all great ways to stay active. You can try everything from archery to Zumba to find something you enjoy. There are plenty of ways to stay active if you have a disability that limits your mobility.

Current recommendations

It is recommended that people of all ages should avoid sitting for long periods of time during the day. There is good evidence that being active for just 10 minutes a day has health benefits, even if you are currently not active at all. However the more you do, the greater the benefits.

In the following recommendations:

• Moderate-intensity activity means an activity that makes you breathe a bit faster, feel a bit warmer and notice your heart beating faster – for example, walking briskly.
• Vigorous-intensity activity will usually make you breathe very hard, so you feel short of breath, make your heart beat quickly and mean you will be unable to carry on a conversation – for example, running or cycling fast or uphill.

Under-5s

• Physical activity in young children shouldn’t need to be encouraged as it comes naturally! However, it is still important to allow young children play from birth, particularly through floor-based play and water-based activities in safe environments.
• Children of preschool age who are capable of walking unaided should be physically active daily for at least 180 minutes (three hours), spread throughout the day.

Children and young people (aged 5-18 years)

• Moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity for at least 60 minutes and up to several hours every day. This can be made up from various shorter sessions and a mixture of different activities. For example, a mixture of play, physical education (PE) at school, games, dance, cycling, a brisk walk to school, sports, various outdoor activities, etc.
• Vigorous-intensity activities, including those that strengthen muscle and bone, should be incorporated at least three days a week.

Adults (aged 19-64 years)

• Over a week, activity should add up to at least 150 minutes (2½ hours) of moderate-intensity activity in bouts of 10 minutes or more. For example, 30 minutes on at least five days a week.
• Comparable benefits can be achieved by 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity spread across the week or combinations of moderate-intensity and vigorous-intensity activity.

Older adults (aged 65 years and older)

• Older adults who participate in any amount of physical activity gain some health benefits. Some physical activity is better than none and more physical activity provides greater health benefits.
• Older adults should aim to be active daily and, if possible, aim for the same amount of physical activity as younger adults.

Aerobic activities

Aerobic activities are any activity that requires oxygen to produce energy, making your heart and lungs work harder. Government experts in the UK suggest that, to gain health benefits, you should do at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most days of the week.

• 30 minutes at least is ideal but you do not have to do this all at once. For example, cycling to work and back for 15 minutes each way adds up to 30 minutes.
• Moderate-intensity physical activity , as explained above, means that you get warm, mildly out of breath and mildly sweaty. For example, brisk walking, jogging, swimming, cycling, dancing, badminton, tennis, etc. However, as mentioned above, normal activities that are part of your daily routine (everyday activities) may make up some of the 30 minutes. For example, housework, DIY, climbing lots of stairs, and gardening can all make you mildly out of breath and mildly sweaty.
• On most days means that you cannot store up the benefits of physical activity. You need to do it regularly. Being physically active on at least five days a week is recommended.

The amount of physical activity that you do may need to be a little more in some situations:

• If you are at risk of putting on weight, you should ideally build up to 45-60 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most days to help to manage your weight.
• If your body mass index (BMI) was in the obese category and you have lost a lot of weight, or if you are in this situation and you are trying to lose weight, you should ideally build up to 60-90 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most days to help manage your weight.

Muscle-strengthening activities

In addition to aerobic activities, adults should also aim to do a minimum of two sessions of muscle-strengthening activities per week. These activities should involve all major muscle groups and can be done through a variety of activities such as lifting weights, yoga, or Pilates.

There are many activities that can help to strengthen your muscles, such as climbing stairs, walking uphill, lifting or carrying shopping, digging the garden, weight training, Pilates, yoga or similar resistance exercises that use the major muscle groups. The activities and exercises you do should not only improve your muscle strength, but also improve your flexibility and balance. You might find that working out at a gym suits you, but you can also get a good workout at home. For example, you can do stair climbing, stretching and resistance exercises at home without any special clothing or equipment.

A workout session should involve a minimum of 8-10 exercises that target the major muscle groups. The ideal way to build muscle strength is to use resistance (like a weight for arm exercises) and do 8-12 repetitions of each exercise. Choose a weight that allows you to do 8-12 repetitions before the muscle group gets tired and you have to stop. An example of working out your upper arm muscles would be to hold a weight in your hand and bend your arm up and down 8-12 times. This should make your arm muscles tire. If you would like, you can use heavier weights and do fewer repetitions.

You can complete a session by doing the exercises one after another. You can also do short sessions throughout the day instead of one long session.

If you are doing intense muscle-strengthening exercises for a particular sport, you should space your muscle-strengthening sessions out over the course of the week, rather than doing them on consecutive days.

How can we study the connections between activity and health?

The effects of activity on health is studied by researchers through various approaches.

There are many different types of research that can be used to study the effects of physical activity, but clinical trials are one of the most well-known. In a clinical trial, different types of physical activity are compared in order to see which is more effective. An example of this would be if scientists did clinical trials to see how physical activity affected pain, mobility, cognition, cardiovascular health, diabetes, and death.

Although clinical trials are the best way to test a new treatment, they are also difficult to run . The researchers need people to be more or less physically active and change their lifestyles for an extended period of time. Then, they measure changes in fitness, muscle strength, and heart health.

In order to collect accurate data on activity and health, some researchers have participants fill out questionnaires. However, this is less accurate because participants may incorrectly remember or overreport their activity levels.

Wearable technology devices, like movement trackers and smartwatches, can not only record measures of activity, but also heart rate, blood pressure, skin temperature, and oxygen levels.