Would you like to lead a medicine-free life? By bringing simple changes in your lifestyle you can stay healthy and live longer without the help of medicines.

So, what are the things you need to do to be fit and fine even in your 70s? It’s very simple. Just include some physical activities in your daily routine to burn the extra fat in your body and to strengthen your muscles.

Now, many of you may not be really interested in reading further mainly because there are ample of articles available online on the health benefits of exercises. Well, this article is very different as it will guide you to the right type of exercises your body needs.

You may not really need to take time out of your busy schedules for physical activities. As mentioned above, you just need to make some slight changes in your lifestyle to stay healthy. If your workplace or educational institute is at a walkable distance, travel by foot and prefer stairs instead of a lift.

But before planning to start any kind of physical activity, you must know a few things about it. There are many popular forms of exercises and each of them has its own health benefits. For example, aerobic exercises help in proper body function and yoga plays a vital role in reducing the risk of many chronic illnesses, like type 2 diabetics and cardiovascular diseases.

It is also important to know that any kind of heavy workouts must be accompanied with warm-up exercises, like stretching that could help you in maintaining flexibility and make the muscles healthier. It also reduces the risk of falling, strains, muscle damage, joint pain, and muscle cramps.

In this article, we present before you an analysis of major exercise forms and their health benefits.

Aerobic exercises

Let’s begin with the most popular form of exercise. Aerobic exercises, like walking, jogging, swimming, dancing, and cycling, are the best way to lead a medicine-free life.

It helps in improving blood circulation, strengthening muscles in respiration, enlarging and strengthening heart muscles, facilitating transportation of oxygen by increasing the number of red blood cells and improving mental health.

Aerobic exercise also plays a vital role in reducing the risk of many chronic illnesses, like cardiovascular problems, diabetics, blood pressure, stroke and various types of cancer, such as colon cancer and breast cancer. It also lowers the risk of depression by reducing stress and boosting your mood.

Now, you must be curious to know if you really need to do aerobic exercise to improve your health. According to a physical therapist from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston named Rachel Wilson, if you struggle to breathe after climbing a few stairs, it’s a good indicator that “you need more aerobic exercise to help condition your heart and lungs, and get enough blood to your muscles to help them work efficiently.”

The biggest benefit of aerobic exercise is that it can be practiced by people belonging to any age group to improve their health. Low and moderate forms of aerobic exercise, like brisk walking, is also safe for pregnant women and aging adults.

However, you must combine aerobic exercise with calorie restriction if you are aiming at reducing your body weight at a rapid rate. Aerobic exercise decreases body weight at a slower rate.

Balance exercises

This is another popular form of exercise. It helps in maintaining your balance and improving your confidence at any age. Although balance exercises are very beneficial for pregnant women, obese people and older adults, they can be practiced by people belonging to any age group.

Balance exercises can improve your current balance abilities and it can prevent you from falls. It is also good for those who have a fear of falling or the people who have experienced a near-fall or had a fall.

Balance exercises, like walking heel to toe, standing on one foot and shifting your weight from side to side, can even help you in improving your stability and reducing the risk of some type of injuries caused due to misbalancing, such as ankle and knee injuries.

Before doing heavy workouts, you must do balance exercises. It will prevent you from getting injured while doing heavy exercises.  

 

High-Intensity Interval Training

As the name suggests, you will have to work really hard in High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). Different types of heavy workouts, like push-ups, cycling, climbing stairs or lifting heavy gym objects including dumbbells, kettlebells or medicine balls, will help you in reducing excessive body fat and strengthening your muscles.

HIIT also helps in regulating insulin levels, increasing metabolism and boosting endurance. Many studies have even highlighted the role played by HIIT in improving cardiovascular fitness, reducing the risk of many cardiovascular diseases and improving memory capacity.

According to a study published in a journal called Cell Metabolism, HIIT plays a vital role in improving age-related decline in cellular powerhouses that are responsible for producing energy molecules for cells. It also helps in the normal body function by increasing the production of proteins in cells, which declines while aging.

So, HIIT is the best type of exercise for someone who plans to reduce their body weight quickly, look young and live longer without the help of medicines.

Strength training

Strength training is a type of exercise that will help you stay strong as you age. It will also boost your confidence level while you do your daily activities, like gardening, lifting heavy objects and carrying groceries.

It also plays an important role in improving posture and balance, reducing stress, assisting weight control, lowering blood sugar levels and stimulating bone growth. Strength training even helps in reducing joint pains and lower-back pains.

Some of the strength training programs include push-ups, squats, crunches, resisting weight from a band or a weight machine and lifting weight at a gym.

Yoga

Yoga is a type of exercise that has proved to be effective without being vigorous. It reduces the risk of hypertension and heart disease. It also decreases the symptoms of headaches, diabetics, depression and some forms of cancer. At times, it even works as a painkiller and lessens the symptoms of pain-related illnesses like arthritis.

An in-depth review on the health benefits of yoga published by Dr. Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine, highlights the role played by yoga in improving your body’s vagal and brain activity.

“[Yoga] puts you in a parasympathetic state, so your heart rate goes down and blood pressure goes down,” Field said, adding, “Stress hormones like cortisol decrease as vagal activity increases.”

A four-year-old study by a group of researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle has also proved the role played by yoga in burning extra fat in the body. However, practicing yoga will not help you in burning loads of calories. It can only burn the amount of fat that could be burned during a brisk walk.

Zumba

If you are not interested in doing any type of exercise, the best type of workout for you is Zumba. It is known to be the best way to burn excess fat in your body through simple dance forms.

A study published in the American Journal of Health Behavior has highlighted the role played by Zumba in making people do workouts, who are not interested in any kind of exercises.

For the study, the researchers observed a group of women with obesity and type 2 diabetics for 16 weeks. At the end of the study, they found that the participants lost over a kilogram of weight with the help of Zumba.

“After the study had ended, most the participants continued going. It seems like most of them had fun, made friends and didn’t see Zumba as hard work,” said an associate professor at the University of Georgia named Jamie Cooper, who is also the co-author of the study.

In short, every exercise form has its own health benefits and side effects. You can combine two or three forms of exercise together to get a better result. For example, you can combine aerobic exercises with yoga, balance exercises, and strength training to reap maximum benefit. 

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