Cardiovascular Health

Benefits of Exercise for Your Heart

Our heart is the most important muscle in our body. Ensuring that it is healthy is important to our survival. As we all know, exercise is a critical part of our overall health and has multiple benefits to all of our body’s systems and since our heart is at the core of these systems having it operate at optimum capacity is key. With exercise being beneficial, what exactly are the benefits to our heart? HPFY can give you the important facts you need to know.

What are the Benefits of Exercise?

As you can imagine, exercise is beneficial for a whole score of reasons. Cardiovascular benefits of exercise consist of maintenance of healthy weight, reduced chances of diabetes, and other health benefits. So how exactly does exercise benefit our heart specifically? Research at Johns Hopkins has determined several cardiovascular benefits of exercise including:

• Control blood pressure
• Weight control
• Strengthens muscles
• Stop or slow diabetes
• Lowers stress

These benefits alone are fabulous reasons why we should exercise in order to benefit our hearts. Regular exercise also can help you quit smoking since when smokers become more fit, they tend to quit smoking. Also, fit people are less likely to start that disgusting habit which can lead to plaque buildup in our arteries affecting circulation. As your body becomes more accustomed to regular exercise, chronic inflammation can also be reduced.

Exercises to Keep Your Heart Healthy

So, if regular exercise can benefit our hearts, is there specific exercises we should be doing? There are some simple ways to exercise in order to benefit our heart that is easy to accomplish. Being physically active doesn’t mean hitting the gym for three hours a day. We can increase our physical activity by simply changing the way we do some everyday tasks, as well as employing an exercise routine. Try some of these baby steps in order to jumpstart your exercise regimen:

• Park away from your destination so you walk more.
• Avoid the elevator and use the stairs.
• Walk: A little during lunch or on a bad weather day hit the mall.
• Rise and shine early to exercise to start your day.

These are just some simple, everyday adjustments that can start you on your exercise path to a heart-healthy lifestyle. Incorporate a fitness tracker to keep track of your progress and use it as a motivator to break your personal records. Keeping a training heart rate poster nearby can give you the target heart rate for you. Some simple exercises for heart health can include:

1. Stairs: Walking or running upstairs (in the bleachers or at home) is a great aerobic exercise. Try to achieve 50%-85% of your maximum heart rate to reap the full benefit. Employ a heart rate monitor to keep track.
2. Biking: A great aerobic exercise that utilizes the large muscles in your legs is hopping on the bike (stationary or road bike). Hopping on the stationary bike or a peddler is great for those bad weather days!!
3. Swimming: Talk about a full-body workout!! Swimming is the perfect aerobic exercise for building stamina and heart health. Plus, heart health can be achieved in 2 ½ hours per week.
4. Elliptical Machine: Quickly becoming a very popular piece of equipment, these elliptical steppers can exercise your upper and lower body at the same time while increasing your heart rate.
5. Dance: Take your spouse or partner out on the town for a night of dancing for a great heart-healthy aerobic workout while having a great time. Try a Zumba class or just hit the local club.
6. Videogame: Believe it or not, aerobic exercise for your heart can come from a videogame console such as the Nintendo Wii. These interactive video games can incorporate yoga and dance to increase your heart rate and aerobic activity. Not to mention, can be fun for the whole family and can be used when the weather doesn’t permit us to go outside.

Keeping our hearts healthy has long-lasting, positive effects on our bodies and overall health. Before starting any exercise routine, you should always check with your doctor to ensure that you are healthy enough to handle any increase in physical stress. If you experience any pain, stop immediately and consult your physician or physical therapist. Get active and stay healthy!!

 

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