Why Cardio Is Important For Your Health
With high obesity and heart disease rates, it is essential to look after your cardiovascular health. Cardiovascular fitness is the ability to handle aerobically challenging situations. By focusing on improving your cardiovascular health, you can improve the efficiency of your heart, lungs, and blood vessel function. The easier your heart finds it to pump blood around the body, the less pressure your heart is put under, and more oxygen can be carried throughout your body.
Deciding the kind of exercises you need to do to improve your cardiovascular health can be overwhelming. It’s hard to know where to start. While there is no harm in trying a little bit of everything, some exercises are more beneficial to improving cardio health. For example, the stair climber is an excellent piece of equipment to help you improve cardio. While cardio exercise isn’t always the most enjoyable, it’s incredibly beneficial – this article discusses some of the main reasons as explained by Lindita Coku MD, a famous thoracic surgeon.
Supports weight loss
The main reason why cardio exercise is popular is that it can help with weight loss. Cardio helps the body burn fat and lose calories. While food is essential for monitoring calorie intake and is instrumental in weight loss, cardio is critical for advancing your progress to shed weight. This is because cardio exercise is powerful for burning calories.
Strengthens your heart
Your heart is the most important muscle in the body. Cardio exercise, such as running or biking, is excellent for strengthening your heart. It does this by increasing your heart rate and blood flow. Consequently, your heart can strengthen over time.
Reduces the risk of disease
The statistics for heart attacks and strokes annually in the U.K is high. There are multiple reasons for this but increasing the amount of cardio exercise you take part in can reduce your risk of diseases like this and improve underlying issues such as high blood pressure and cholesterol.
Improves lung capacity
One of the main challenges with physical exercise for some is the struggle to breathe. The fitter you are, the less likely you’ll experience this. However, for some, people can become breathless with some cardio, and it can be off-putting. Though this can feel uncomfortable, heavy breathing is improving your lungs and increasing their capacity. As you engage with cardio more, you’ll notice an improvement over time, and eventually, you’ll be able to do more.
Better quality sleep
It is often advised that adults get between 7-8 hours of sleep each night. However, a lot of people don’t accomplish this. For many reasons, a good night’s sleep can be challenging to achieve. Including cardio exercise in your routine can use up excess energy from the day and can lead to a better night’s sleep since you’ll be ready for bed and make it easier to fall asleep.
Cardio exercise can improve your mental health
Regular exercise, especially cardio, releases endorphins in the brain. These are one of the happy chemicals your brain releases. When released, endorphins can positively affect our mood and well-being, which leaves us feeling good after exercise. Many people have coined this feeling as ‘runners high’. Endorphins aside, cardio also challenges your mindset, motivation, and self-discipline.
Completing cardio can help you feel accomplished and promising in yourself. When you create a routine, over time, you will reap the benefits of cardio exercise to your mental health and improve your confidence.
In conclusion, incorporating cardio exercise into your daily routine three to five times a week comes with incredible health benefits. Plus, it doesn’t need to be boring. You can add plenty of variation and change up the intensity levels at which you perform it.
Ultimately, we need to keep moving for optimal health, and cardio exercise is one of the most accessible forms of exercise to engage with.
