There is no doubt that doing various exercises would be very good to improve the overall health of your body. Exercise would be beneficial to control your body weight, prevent you from many diseases, gain some muscles, and many more. But, it turns out that exercise is more than gain some muscles and control your body weight, because it will be beneficial to improve your mental health too.
Yes, it is true that exercise would be beneficial to boost your mental health. No matter your age or fitness level, many research studies have already shown that even the modest exercise would make a positive impact on your mental health. So, in case you still have a doubt about the mental benefits of exercise, in the lists below you will find a lot of benefits of exercise for your mental health.
1. Improves Your Mood
Feel stressful after having a bad and hard day? Well, if you couldn’t manage your stress in the right manner, then it will be very dangerous for your mental health. If you want to relieve all of the stress feeling, then doing various exercises would be a very effective way. This is because whenever you’re doing various exercise, your brain will release endorphin, which is a feel-good chemicals. On the other hand, doing exercises would also significantly reduce the stress hormone, which is the reason why the stressful feeling inside of you will be alleviated soon after you’re doing exercises.
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2. Decreased Stress
This benefit of exercises is closely related to the benefit that already mentioned above. So, the famous feel-good chemicals that produced by the brain and the spinal cord called endorphins are the main factor to reduce the amount of stress. Another reason, by increasing your heart rate, the stress-induced brain damage would be overcomed because of the production of norepinephrine. Also, by doing exercise, the body’s central and sympathetic nervous system would communicate to each other, which is beneficial to improve the body’s ability to respond to stress.
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3. Release Happy Chemicals
As already mentioned above, whenever you’re doing various exercises, the stressful feeling that you feel will be alleviated. This is because exercises would stimulate the brain and the spinal cord to release various chemicals that will make you happier than before. Specifically, a chemical called endorphins will play a big role to make you feel happier and thus, it will get rid of the symptoms of depression. So, whenever the endorphins are released by the brain, then the chemicals in your immune system that can trigger the symptoms of depression would be reduced and thus, you will be happier and calm.
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4. Way to Cope With Problems in Healthy Way
Whenever you’re facing life challenges, you tend to reward yourself afterwards with unhealthy things, for example, smoking, drinking alcohol, eating excessively, watching TV all day long, etc. Those things are very unhealthy for your mental health and overall health in the future. By rewarding yourself with doing exercise, then you can cope with the life challenges in the healthy manner. This is because it will alleviate the stress feeling and reduce the symptoms of depression. In fact, you can get a new friend and socialize with people by doing exercises. Of course it will be very good for the development of your mental health.
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5. Better Sleep Quality
If you’re having a problem associated with your sleep quality, then you might want to do various exercises to overcome it. If you’re often to have an insomnia at night, then this physical activity is a great choice to do. This is because exercises would help the body to regulate and reboot the circadian rhythms. This is a very essential rhythms that keep you awake during the day and put you on the sleep during the night. Another reason, exercises would increase the body temperature, which then will create the calm effects in your mind. Thus, you will feel sleepy and you will have a better sleep quality.
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6. Boost Your Energy
If you feel like tired throughout the day, then it is a sign that you’re not very well mentally. Doing various exercises would overcome that problem since these activities will make you become more energized than before. This is because by doing exercises, your muscle will be stronger and thus, you will have a better endurance. Another reason, exercise would transport the oxygen and nutrients from the foods to your tissues. Thus, it will make your cardiovascular system to work more efficiently. There is no doubt that you will feel more energized whenever your heart and lungs are in a very good condition. So, if you want to get more energy, don’t consume energy drink, just try to do various exercises.
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7. Sharpen Your Memory
When it comes to the mental health, then doing various exercises would give you a lot of advantages, including your memory. It turns out that exercise would help to sharpen your memory. This is because whenever you’re doing exercises, obviously the sweat will get out of your body. The sweat that comes out of the body will increase the cells’ production in hippocampus. This hippocampus are responsible for the health of your memory. In the matter of fact, many research studies have shown that children with a high level of physical fitness had a better brain development compared to the children with lower level of physical fitness.
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8. Improves Your Brain Performance
Aside from its benefit that can sharpen your memory, exercise would also very beneficial to improve the performance of your brain. In the matter of fact, many research studies conducted in both mice and men have shown this benefit. According to the studies, doing various physical activities, specifically cardiovascular exercise, would stimulate the creation of neurogenesis or a new brain cell. Because of that, the performance of your brain will be better. Another reason, by doing various exercises, the body will stimulate the production of brain-derived protein known as BDNF. These brain-derived protein will help you in a situation when you need to make a quick thinking and reasonable decision.
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9. Induces Relaxation
As already mentioned above, doing various exercises would alleviate stress and the symptoms of depression. Thus, they will also very essential to promote the relax feeling inside of your mind. So, exercise would increase the body temperature. When the body temperature is back to normal, then it will give the signal to the body that it is a perfect time to rest and sleep. Because of this reason, many research studies have concluded that the moderate amount of exercise is equivalent to a sleeping pill. Thus, it will be a perfect solution for people with insomnia problem.
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10. Improves Self-Confidence
It turns out that exercise also can improve your self-confidence. This is because whenever you’re doing exercises on a regular basis, then there is no doubt that you will get a great shape from your body. The great shape that your body will get then will make you look good and better than before. Thus, it will boost your confidence. In the matter of fact, many studies have already shown that there is a correlation between exercises and the improvement of people’s self-confidence. The studies have concluded that exercise can elevate people’s perception of their attractiveness. If you want to have a great mental health, it all start from loving yourself.
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11. Enjoy the Great Nature
Exercise is more than just doing physical activities, because it can also boost your self-confidence and happiness. On top of that, you will become a great person because you will appreciate the nature more than before, especially whenever you’re doing the exercises in outdoors.
13. Makes You Happier
Simple jogging in the park or mountain hiking will make you happier. This is because you can feel the greatness and the beauty of the nature. Doing exercises and then enjoying a fresh air and also soaking the Vitamin D from the sun would automatically bring some kind of enjoyment and calmness inside of your mind. Basically, you will get everything you need to have a good mental health. So, are you ready to do an outdoor exercise and enjoy the greatness of the nature?
13. Prevents Cognitive Decline
There is no surprise that doing various exercises will bring a good effect on your brain. As already mentioned above, exercise would sharpen your memory, as well as improve the brain performance. There is another benefit for your mental health if you’re doing exercises on a regular basis. Yes, it will prevent the cognitive decline.
14. Reduce the Degenerative Function Risk
So, whenever we are getting older, there is no doubt that our cognitive will be declined and that’s totally normal. In a more dangerous way, the elderly would have a high risk of having the disease associated with degenerative function of the brain such as Alzheimer. Exercise would stimulate the production of chemicals which will help to delay the development of cognitive decline. Because of that, you will be protected from a disease like Alzheimer
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15. Take the Negative Mind Out
Another mental benefit that you will get from doing exercises is that you will have a positive mind. This is because whenever you’re doing exercises, then normally you need to make a schedule for it first. If you’re doing everything unscheduled, then you will be most likely to have a negative mind about everything. Doing a scheduled thing such as exercise would help you to think positively about every aspect. Thus, you will live a happier life than before. In the matter of fact, many studies have already proved that doing various exercises would help to redirect your mind into a more positive way.
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16. Helps You Get the Stuff Done
Have you ever struggled to finish the things off? Most of people have a lot of objectives at certain stages of their life, but they often feel struggle to accomplish them because of many reasons, such as lack of commitment, lack of motivation, or a lot of distractions. If you are among one of them, then you need to think to start doing exercises. This is because exercise will help you to get the things done. According to many studies published in the British Medical Journal, about 10 minutes of doing exercises will improve your ability to concentrate on things. Also, it will boost the mental strength.
17. Improves Your Creativity
Do you have a big presentation or exam ahead of you? Well, then doing exercises would be a perfect choice as a part of your preparation. This is because doing various exercises would increase your creativity and help you to think outside the box. According to many studies, doing exercise about two hours before your big performance would be significantly beneficial to boost your creativity. The sweat that comes out of your body will improve the creativity up to two hours after your exercise session. So, after knowing this fact, are you ready to do some exercises before having a performance on your big day?
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18. Improves Longevity
The last mental benefit that you will get from doing various exercises is you will have a bigger chance to live longer compared to those who don’t do exercise. As already mentioned above, exercise would alleviate the stress and the symptoms of depression and thus, you will be happier. If you have less stress, then of course you will be less likely to have many diseases that could be triggered by poor mental health, such as stroke for example. Also, there is no surprise that exercise would keep your lungs and heart in a good condition. So, if you want to live longer, then you need to do exercise on a regular basis as soon as possible.
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So, after you already know about all of the mental benefits of exercise, now it is a great time to get started with. But, many of you maybe wondering about how can you get the full mental benefits from exercise? In case you’re still in doubt, in the information below you will find easy tricks to get the mental benefits of exercise.
1. Exercise With Your Friends
Sometimes, you might feel bored whenever you do the exercise just on your own. One of the possible solution for that problem is bringing your friends with you whenever you’re doing exercise. Whenever you do the exercise with your friends, the exercise would be more fun. This is because you will have someone to talk to and you can give motivation to each other whenever you feel you want to give up on exercises.
2. Exercise on a Small Scale, But Frequent and Routine
Whenever you have a stress, it would be very hard to get started to have an exercise. In order to solve this problem, do the small exercise first. It is always better if you’re doing small exercises, but frequent and routine rather than doing heavy exercises at once but you feel exhausted very quickly and you don’t enjoy it. Just follow your own rhythm and enjoy your exercise.
3. Reward Yourself.
This trick is very beneficial whenever you’re doing exercises. We know that doing exercises sometimes could exhaust you or bored you and that’s pretty normal. Giving yourself a reward after you exercise in certain periods of time would boost and maintain your motivation to do the exercise in the future. Reward yourself with watching your favourite movies or buying your favourite foods would be very beneficial to get the full advantage of exercise, including your mental thing.
So, now you already know all of the mental benefits of exercise. Also,you already know about various tricks on how to get mental benefits from exercise. The conclusion that we can get is that exercise would be very beneficial to boost the health in every aspect of your life. With exercise you will get a healthy body, healthy social life, and healthy mind too. So, start your exercise as soon as possible and feel the improvement of your personality through it. Stay healthy!
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