Regular exercise and fitness

REGULAR EXERCISE AND PERSONAL WELL BEING 

Written By: Pavithra Srinivasan  

 

Physical exercise is important for maintaining physical fitness and can contribute to maintaining a healthy weight, regulating digestive health, building and maintaining healthy bone density, muscle strength, and joint mobility, promoting physiological well-being, reducing surgical risks, and strengthening the immune system. Some studies indicate that exercise may increase life expectancy and the overall quality of life.

Fitness

Individuals can increase fitness following increases in physical activity levels.^]Increases in muscle size from resistance training is primarily determined by diet and testosterone. This genetic variation in improvement from training is one of the key physiological differences between elite athletes and the larger population. Studies have shown that exercising in leads to better physical ability later in life.

In healthy adults, aerobic exercise has been shown to induce transient effects on cognition after a

single exercise session and persistent effects on cognition following regular exercise over the course of several months. People who regularly perform aerobic exercise (e.g., running, jogging, brisk walking, swimming, and cycling) have greater scores on neuro-psychological function and performance tests that measure certain cognitive functions, such as attention control, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, working memory updating and capacity, declarative memory, spatial memory, and information processing speed. The transient effects of exercise on cognition include improvements in most executive functions (e.g., attention, working memory, cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, problem solving, and decision making) and information processing speed for a period of up to 2 hours after exercising.

References:

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2.    Mattson MP (2014). "Interventions that improve body and brain bioenergetics for Parkinson's disease risk reduction and therapy". J Parkinsons Dis. 4 (1): 1–13. PMID 24473219. doi:10.3233/JPD-130335

3.    ^b Grazina R, Massano J (2013). "Physical exercise and Parkinson's disease: influence on symptoms, disease course and prevention". Rev Neurosci. 24 (2): 139–152. PMID 23492553. doi:10.1515/revneuro-2012-0087.

4.    Van der Kolk NM, King LA (September 2013). "Effects of exercise on mobility in people with Parkinson's disease". Mov. Disord. 28 (11): 1587-1596. PMID 24132847. doi:10.1002/mds.25658. Tomlinson CL, Patel S, Meek C, Herd CP, Clarke CE, Stowe R, et al. (September 2013).

5.    "Physiotherapy versus placebo or no intervention in Parkinson's disease". Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 9: CD002817. PMID 24018704. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD002817.pub4.