Benefits of exercise 2

Exercise and software developers are often not seen as a pair that goes together. Chances are as a software developer, you are spending a large portion of your day sitting in front of a computer. When you remain stationary for a prolonged period, you are actually hurting your productivity and your health. You can get better results if you squeeze in a short workout. I am not a fitness expert, but I can attest to the fact that exercising does help improve my health and productivity.

I am going to cover some of the benefits to exercising. The topics I will be covering are:

• reduce stress
• improve mood
• increase relaxation and better sleep
• combats health conditions and diseases
• influence on brain

Reduce stress

Believe it or not, one of the best thing you can do after a rough day is a quick workout. One of the most common benefits of exercise is stress relief. Working up a sweat helps manage physical and mental stress. Exercise also increases the concentration of norepinephrine, which is a chemical that moderates the brain’s response to stress.

Improve mood

Exercise releases endorphins, which create feelings of happiness and euphoria. Studies show that exercise can help relieve symptoms among clinically depressed individuals. You do not have to exercise too much to experience the mood boost from working out. Getting thirty minutes of exercise a few times a week can instantly boost your overall mood.

Increase relaxation and better sleep

Regular physical activity can help you fall asleep faster. It also increases the quality of sleep you get. For some people, exercise is the equivalent of a sleeping pill, even for people with insomnia.

When you exercise, you increase your body’s core temperature. When the temperature drops back to normal a few hours later, it signals the body that it is time to sleep. I have done a post about the benefit of sleep if you want to find out more about what quality sleep can do for you.

Combats health conditions and diseases

When you are physically active, you decrease your risk of cardiovascular diseases. Regardless of your weight, being active boost high-density lipoprotein (HDL) or “good” cholesterol and decreases unhealthy triglycerides. Exercising helps you keep your blood flowing smoothly, which reduces the risk of heart diseases and high blood pressure. Regular exercise even helps to prevent and manage health problems and concerns such as stroke, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, depression, and arthritis.

Influence on your brain

The increase in productivity from exercising comes from the effects physical activities have on your brain. Exercising keeps your brain healthy and in optimal functioning order. Regular exercise affects your brain in many ways such as:

• preventing cognitive decline
• regulate brain health
• help brain rejuvenation
• improve brain functions

Preventing cognitive decline

As we get older, our brains become less efficient. From old age, our brain actually shrinks and loses many important brain functions in the process. Exercising and a healthy lifestyle cannot completely stop cognitive decline that happens as we age, but it can surely slow it down. When you are physically active, it boosts the chemical in the brain that support and prevents degeneration of the hippocampus, which plays an important role in memory and learning within the brain.

Regulate brain health

For many years, scientists have been linking the benefit of exercise to brain health. In recent years from research, it shows that exercise helps you build a brain that resists shrinkage and increases cognitive abilities. Exercise allows your brain to work at optimal capacity by causing your nerve cells to multiply, strengthening their interconnections, and protecting them from damage.

There are multiple mechanisms at work here, but some of them are becoming better understood. For example, the rejuvenating role of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), which protects yourself and your brain from stress, is one of them. BDNF activates brain stem cells to convert into new neurons.

Exercise also provides protective effects to your brain through:

• production of nerve-protecting compounds
• improved development and survival neurons
• decreased risk of heart and blood vessel diseases
• altering the way damaging proteins resides inside your brain, which slows down the development of Alzheimer’s disease

Help brain rejuvenation

There are an increasing number of studies that indicate that exercise trigger genes and growth factors that recycle and rejuvenate your brain and muscle tissues. These growth factors include BDNF and muscle regulatory factors (MRFs). Growth factors signal brain stem cells and muscle satellite cells to convert into new neurons and new muscle cells.

BDNF plays a role in the neuro-muscular system where it protects neuro-motors from degradation. Neuromotor is a critical element to your muscle. Without neuromotor, your muscle cannot function properly.

BDNF is actively involved in your brain and muscles. This connection appears to be a major part of the explanation for why exercising can benefit your brain tissue. BDNF helps prevent and even reverse brain decay as much as it prevents and reverses age-related muscle decay.

Improve brain functions

When you exercise, blood flow and oxygen levels in the brain increase. Exercise also encourages the release of the brain chemicals that are responsible for the production of cells in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is part of the brain that controls memory and learning. The result from this is a boost in concentration and cognitive ability and a reduced risk of cognitive degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Exercise also helps you get better sleep, which has a positive effect on learning. I have a post about how sleep directly influences learning if you want to find out more about this topic.

Brain after exercise

A study in the Neuroscience, suggests that the secret to increased productivity and happiness is a long-term investment in regular exercise. A little physical activity each day appears to have more benefit that a lot of physical activity once or twice a week. Exercise triggers BDNF and endorphins that help boost your mood, make you feel good and sharpen your cognition.

To understand why little physical activity each day might be better take a look at this image that compares the drastic difference in brain activity after a 20-minute walk:

If you exercise only once or twice a week, your brain activity will only be high on those days you do exercise. Any other day, your brain would have little activity. When you exercise a little each day, your brain will always have a higher level of activity, which helps with cognition.

The range of benefits from exercise is desirable and will help you as you age. Exercise helps prevent many health problems and cognitive declination. In addition to benefiting your health and making you feel great, exercise also increases your productivity by keeping your brain at its best and help you get better sleep.

Did you find this post helpful? If so, share it with others who can benefit from this. Is there any information that I left out that you felt should be included? Have you experience some of these benefits from exercise? Feel free to leave a comment. Also, follow me on twitter.