Use Exercise to Prolong Your Life

Exercise can be used in a variety of ways. It can be used for rest and relaxation, muscle building and figure contouring, and cardiovascular/pulmonary fitness. All three have merit, but only one has the potential to prolong your life—cardiovascular conditioning.

The body’s top ten benefits of aerobic exercise

1. More efficient functioning of the lungs. Your maximum breathing capacity increases and you can ventilate more air in a short period of time.  That means better extraction of oxygen or air in the lungs into the blood stream and more rapid elimination of carbon dioxide.
2. A more efficient and functioning heart. A highly conditioned athlete nearly always has a lower resting heart rate than a person who is not in condition because there is some dilatation of the heart and it can pump out more blood with each stroke, which is called the ejection fraction. In other words, it can do more work with less effort.
3. Development of new blood vessels. In response to aerobic-type activities, there may be a development of new blood vessels around partially or totally obstructed vessels, particularly in the heart. This is called an increase in collateral circulation, which, at times, can compensate for an obstruction and can overcome the harmful effects of an obstructed vessel and reduce or eliminate angina.
4. Blood volume tends to increase, particularly the amount of hemoglobin and red blood cells. This enhances the ability of the body to transport oxygen from the lungs into the blood and into the muscles.
5. A change in metabolism, to the extent you can consume more calories without gaining weight.
6. Protection against osteoporosis. In conjunction with any type of physical activity, there is an increase in muscle mass, a loss of fat, and an increase in bone density, delaying the onset or preventing the osteoporosis.
7. Protection against diabetes. Due to the increase in muscle mass, there is a decrease in likelihood of diabetes since muscle handles sugar much better than fat.
8. There may be a decrease in body weight, but does not occur rapidly unless there is caloric restriction in conjunction with the increased physical activity.
9. Positive cholesterol effects. Nearly always, the serum triglycerides decrease in response to aerobic activity and there is a sharp increase in the HDL (good) cholesterol. There may or may not be a decrease in the total cholesterol.
10. Aerobic activity has a relaxing effect on the digestive system, decreasing the likelihood of peptic ulcers or esophageal reflux.

By Kenneth Cooper, M.D., Founder and Chairman, Cooper Aerobics Center