Exercise is known to make you physically fit, that’s a universal fact, but exercise helps mental health too. It would be great if you can improve your physical health as well as mental health together, and if you want that package deal get up and start working out. Exercise/working out is a natural drug known to make you happy, fit, and for me, that’s the drug I want to be addicted to.
You will believe when you do exercise, and feel the change yourself then get behind the banner saying “exercise helps mental health”.
Exercise helps mental health, and these are some of its benefits…
- Better Sleep
What happens when your phone is running low on battery? – switch off, right.
It’s the same with your body after a good workout session your energy will be depleted so your mind will make you feel like you’re tired early than usual making you sleep more soundly so that your body can recover from exercise muscle soreness. Stretching before going to the bed that will be like the cherry on the top for your muscle recovery, and you will wake up early feeling that you had your best sleep ever.
If you are a person who can fall asleep easily then start exercising the particular reason for that is some Studies have shown that long-term exercise (ranging from periods of four to 24 weeks) enables individuals with insomnia to fall asleep faster, sleep longer, and enjoy better sleep quality than they did before exercising.
Sleep act as a med pack-in game of life.
2. Happiness
Do you know that your body generates chemical “endorphins” that are particularly responsible to function as a painkiller. Whenever you work out your body releases endorphins to get rid of pain, and with it, serotonin is released which skyrockets your mood. All this process in turn makes you happy.
3. Stress
As I wrote above whenever you work out it releases certain chemical endorphins which in short makes you feel good that in turn reduces your stress level. Exercise is said to be the best, easiest, and natural treatment to relieve tension while boosting your physical and mental energy. People who are more indulged in physical activities have low stress levels when compared to people that are not.
Anything that gets you moving can and will help like playing your favorite sport or performing any kind of workout like cardio, weight-lifting, etc.
My personal favorite exercise for stress relief would be swimming, cycling, and dancing. Do tell me your favorite form of exercise in the comment.
4. Improved energy level
It’s normal understanding that the more you workout the more tired you are but it’s the exact opposite. Exercise has been actually proven to improve your energy level, we all have heard mitochondria is power house of the cell that means your energy level would be the same as the level of mitochondria cells produced in your body and working out or any kind of physical activity has proven to increase the production of mitochondria cells in your body.
Most of our energy comes from our diet so we should keep a check on what we eat or drink, get enough nutrients into our body.
5. Increased Brain power
As we grow our cognitive level start’s to decline for that any kind of physical activity done over a some time has proven to improve both human, and animal cognitive function, and brain plasticity ( It’s the ability of brain changing, and growing over time).
It also prevents your cognitive level to decline, and strengthens the hippocampus (It’s a part of the brain which is responsible for memory, and learning). Plus you will be productive in both personal, and work life so next time you have a creative task at hand just pick up some weights, and get started.
Conclusion
If you’re not an active guy start just take a step, and adopt a more active & healthy lifestyle, and it can simply as doing daily tasks or making small changes to your routine, by adding any kind of easy exercise that would elevate your heart rate such as walking up a flight of stairs, picking cycle as your daily mode of transportation.
Now we all can agree that exercise helps mental health, and these benefits may not seem much, but they do help in long run protecting you from diseases like depression, other anxiety related conditions, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Do not forget the added benefit of getting rid of the extra weight. Apart from exercise, there are many other ways to improve your mental health.