Aerobics affect your daily activities

As the quarantine and lock-down period has come to almost finish all over the world, our movement has started from home to certain other places for work, purchase or leisure purposes, this counts for time spent in outside activities + time we spent on social media is something an unavoidable task for some people.

On an average if we spent some 10 -15 minutes on our phone for 5-6 times in a day will account for 50-60 minutes in a day on phone only. And the moment we talk about exercises most of us will excuse for no time, though we admit the benefits of exercise.

With increased sedentary life and no movement our heart (cardiovascular) capacity decreases which results in poor blood circulation throughout the body and also increase in blood pressure at point of age. Recent research articles have concluded that blood pressure and other heart complications can increase at early age due to lack of activity. 

There are many studies which says that blood pressure and other heart ailment are no longer diseases of old age and onset of such diseases from middle age of life are common. Further as the age progresses increase in heart related problem increases, prime reason behind it is inactivity along with poor dietary habits. 

Increase in age correlated with increase in blood pressure

A decrease in this heart function makes tasks like climbing several floors at a time difficult, it also makes you tired when you run for few seconds, walking, running and swimming fairly long distance difficult. If your heart is not trained well, you will get tired within few rounds of certain games like tennis, squash and football etc.

Very compromised cardiovascular endurance (very poor heart capacity) may cause cardiac arrest during the above mentioned activities. This is because heart isn’t trained enough to pump blood continuously for long duration of time to the active muscles.

When you try to climb stairs your leg muscles are involved to carry out this activity but your heart is continuously providing blood, energy and oxygen to leg muscles to carry out climbing function. In due course when heart gets tired, leg muscles do not get sufficient energy and oxygen via blood and your leg muscles get tired leaves you exhausted within few minutes. Same is true with other activities mentioned above as all activity requires continuous working of heart muscles. So to avoid all this you need to train your heart increase its endurance (capacity).

For people who build muscle for aesthetic purposes and completely ignore the cardiovascular training finds challengeable situations several times. Without cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance cannot be utilized. Once cardiovascular fatigue sets in, it is impossible to use the body’s musculoskeletal strength. For e.g. no matter how muscularly strong and fast a boxer is, he cannot use his strength to punch hard once heart gets fatigued.

How to improve cardiovascular endurance:

This component of fitness is enhanced by doing low intensity (less tiring work) over a long duration without stopping. Such exercises are aerobic in nature are called cardiovascular exercises or aerobic exercises and they include walking, jogging, running, swimming, skipping, cycling, using cardio machine that stimulates climbing stairs (stepper/ stair mill),running without impact (elliptical trainer),rowing machine.

The intensity should be low enough to allow a person to continuously do the activity for 20 minutes. Once a person can do same activity for about 60 min comfortably, the intensity should be increased either by increasing the speed, inclination or resistance.

 In one of current research paper, conducted on 2 groups of mice, where one group was given running wheel for exercise and other do not, they were studied for 3 weeks. At the end of 3 weeks researchers tested the brain function and brain ability to cope with stress. A stressful event was created for both groups of mice. And the result was very interesting, group of mice who exercised on running wheel for 3 weeks could easily cope the situations whereas another group couldn’t. Group of mice who exercised showed the elevated level of GALANIN in brainstem (part of brain) which is involved in stress response. 

Increase your Galanin level with following activities and enjoy the peace of mind by managing stress.

List of Cardiovascular exercises:

·       Running

·       Jogging

·       Brisk walking

·       Swimming

·       Aerobic dance

·       Zoomba dance

·       Surya-Namaskar in continuation

·       Skipping

·       Cycling

·       Cardio machine

·       Elliptical training

·       Rowing 

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