The benefits of exercise are truly extraordinary. Indeed, if some clever sales-man could sell exercise as, say, “The E Technique,” and convince people of all the benefits they’d gain from using this technique, he would be a billion-aire! Here’s how exercise can help you live better today and as the years go by:

■ Exercise can make your heart stronger.
■ Exercise burns calories and helps you maintain a healthy weight.
■ Exercise is essential for keeping off lost weight. Sedentary individuals may lose 23 to 35 percent of muscle mass over the course of their adult lives.

 
■ Exercise helps to control your blood sugar and thus helps to manage or prevent diabetes.
■ Exercise can improve circulation, which has myriad beneficial health effects.
■ Exercise can decrease blood pressure.
■ Exercise increases your cognitive ability, including your ability to concentrate and remain alert.
■ Exercise before or after a meal diminishes the postprandial rise in potentially harmful triglycerides (a type of fat).
■ Exercise decreases your risk for metabolic syndrome.
■ Exercise can decrease the levels of “bad” low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and increase the levels of “good” high density (HDL)
■ Exercise boosts the immune system.
■ Exercise can reduce back pain.
■ Exercise lowers your risk for upper respiratory infections.
■ Exercise helps relieve arthritis.
■ Exercise lowers your overall risk of dying prematurely.
■ Exercise can make you stronger and more flexible.
■ Exercise, particularly weight-bearing exercise, can make your bones stronger.
■ Exercise increases your level of endorphins—brain chemicals that increase your sense of well-being.
■ Exercise is an essential activity to prevent cataracts and age-related macular degeneration.

There’s no question that the positive benefits of physical activity are extraordinary. Here is a list of the diseases and conditions that exercise can help prevent and/or improve:
■ Coronary artery disease
■ Heart disease
■ Stroke
■ Colon cancer
■ Endometrial cancer
■ Breast cancer
■ Prostate cancer
■ Osteoporosis
■ Obesity
■ Type II diabetes
■ Depression
■ Dementia
■ Cataracts and macular degeneration
■ Chronic lung disease
■ Arthritis
■ Disability

This is an impressive list. Keep in mind that many of the physiological benefits will occur immediately. While preventing dementia or osteoporosis or coronary artery disease would probably rank as a top long-term goal, you don’t have to wait till old age for the benefits of exercise to kick in. Exercise will give you an immediate boost in mood, mental acuity, and overall energy levels.

This isn’t surprising when you appreciate the dramatic effect that physical activity has on the human body. Yes, you’re sweating a bit, probably breathing heavily, and perhaps you feel your muscles aching. However, here’s what’s happening on a cellular level when you’re active: You’re increasing the activity of free-radical scavenging enzymes, improving immune function, increasing circulating T- and B-lymphocytes, reducing body fat, increasing gastrointestinal motility, altering hormone levels,

This the same time period. ence between the ages of thirty and seventy has more to do with a seden-tary lifestyle than with the aging process. Exercise slows the deterioration of a host of bodily systems. It helps reverse impairments in sleep, sexual, and cognitive functions as well as loss of muscle mass and bone strength. improving insulin resistance, reducing triglyceride levels, and providing beneficial effects on the inflammatory response. Appreciating the intensely synergistic effects of physical activity makes it easier to see why its health benefits are so extraordinary

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