Does Exercise Keep us healthy

Although exercise can improve mood, their health benefits have been oversold.

Moderate exercise can reduce the risk of diabetes in people at risk. Exercise can reduce the risk of heart disease and breast cancer and colon cancer.

Although the evidence is mixed, exercise can also provide benefits for people with osteoporosis.

Physical activity does not lead to lasting weight loss or reduce blood pressure or cholesterol.

The exercise has long been presented as a panacea for the suffering that you. To improve health, just walk for 20 or 30 minutes a day, boosters say, and you do not have to do everything at once. Wait a few minutes and a few here, and only add. Or use a pedometer and track your steps. However, you manage it, lose weight, have blood pressure under control and reduce the risk of osteoporosis.

If only it were that simple. Although the exercise has undeniable benefits, many if not most, of their powers have been oversold. Of course, it can be fun. It can make you feel excited. And it can lift your mood. But before moving to a fitness program as the solution to his concern for health or weight, think about what science has found.

Moderate exercise such as walking, can reduce the risk of diabetes in obese and sedentary people whose blood sugar levels began to rise. This result is shown in a federal study in which participants were randomly assigned either to an exercise program and diet, to take medication for diabetes or to serve as control. Despite the efforts, Dieter developed countries and lost very little weight. However, he managed to maintain a walking program, and fewer of them went on to develop diabetes.

Exercise can also reduce the risk of heart disease, even if the evidence is extremely uneven. There seems to be a threshold effect: Most of the center of protection appears to be done by people ranging from sedentary to moderately active, usually walk regularly. More intense exercise has been very little to offer greater benefits. However, data from several large studies have not always been clear, because those who exercise tend to be very different from those who do not.

Active people are much less likely to smoke, theyre thin and they eat differently than their sedentary counterparts. They also tend to be more educated, and education is one of the most important predictors of good health and longer life. Accordingly, it is impossible to know with certainty whether the exercise prevents heart disease or those who are less likely to get heart disease are more likely to be exercised.

Scientists have the same problem a lot more exercise and evaluation of cancer. The same type of studies that were conducted to find the heart disease than those with lower rates of breast and colon. But if this is a cause or effect is not well established.

Exercise is often said, to prevent osteoporosis. However, even weight activities such as walking, running or lifting weights has not been shown that this effect. However, rigorous studies in which elderly people were randomly assigned to each exercise or maintain their normal routine, the exercises are less likely to fall, perhaps because I have a better balance and more developed. Because falls can lead to fractures in people with osteoporosis, exercise May prevent fractures, but only indirectly.

And what about weight loss? Lifting weight is muscle, but you will burn more calories. The gain in muscle is minuscule compared to the total amount of skeletal muscle in the body. And the muscle has a very low metabolic rate at rest upon. (You can not flex your biceps all the time.)

Jack Wilmore, an exercise physiologist at Texas A & M University, calculated that the average amount of muscle that men gained after a serious 12-week strength training program was 2 kg or 4.4 lbs. He added that the muscle metabolic rate increase of only 24 calories per day.

The exercise alone, in the absence of weight loss has not been shown to reduce blood pressure. Neither made much difference in cholesterol levels. Weight loss can lower blood pressure and cholesterol, but if you want to lose weight, you have to diet and exercise. Physical exercise has not been demonstrated that the weight supported loss.Just ask Steven Blair, an exercise in research at the University of South Carolina. Runs all day and even short marathons. But, he adds, I was short, fat and bald when I started to run, and Im still short, fat and bald. Weight control is difficult for me. I fight against the loss of the battle.

The difficulty, Mr. Blair said, is that its much easier to eat 1000 calories to burn calories by the year 1000. As he relates, a former soccer coach to say, I have all my assistants running five miles a day, but they eat 10 miles per day.