By Lirika Hart

October 2, 2020

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7 Benefits of Regular And Daily Physical Activity

Do you want to feel good, increase your energy, and even improve the quality of your life? Just engage in regular and daily physical activity. The different physical activities that you can do include power walking, jogging, running, swimming, dancing, and bike riding, just to name a few. Being physically active allows you to enjoy a variety of benefits. It may even add a couple of years to your quality life.

Here are 7 benefits you can reap from engaging in consistent and daily physical activity.

1. Keeps Body Weight in Check

 Being active enables you to be in great shape. It helps you keep excess fats away or maintain weight loss by burning calories. To burn more calories, consider increasing the intensity of the activity. Despite going to the gym, you can start doing some exercise while going to work. Let’s say, if you work in a co-working space that offers a place to leave your bike, you can definitely ride to the office. This will enable you to have some physical activity twice per day while going to and coming back from work. On the other hand, going to the gym regularly is an excellent way to stay physically active. But if you can’t squeeze time into your schedule due to work obligations or other personal reasons, just strive to remain active throughout the day. Use the stairs rather than the elevator and take a brisk walk during coffee and lunch breaks. Above all, remember consistency is the key to reaping the maximum benefits of physical activity.

2. Builds and Maintains Healthy Bones and Muscles

Consistent and daily exercise helps you build and maintain strong bones and muscles. Lifting weights and riding a bike coupled with sufficient protein intake can encourage muscle building. If you’re considering cycling as your go-to activity for maintaining your musculoskeletal health, you might be interested in investing in electric bike kits to integrate on your normal bike, which will give you a new cycling experience while you at the same time build your muscle mass and stamina.

With age, people experience loss of muscle mass and function, putting them at high risk of injuries and physical impairments. Consistent physical activity plays an important role in lowering muscle loss and improving your strength even as you age. It also helps you strengthen your bones and maintain bone density.

3. Boosts Mood

A host of studies show that regular physical activity can be a great mood booster. It can combat feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression by stimulating changes in the sections of the brain responsible for controlling anxiety and stress. It can also stimulate numerous brain chemicals, which may make you happier, calmer, and less anxious.

4. Brings Back the Spark in Your Sex Life

 Are you struggling to enjoy physical intimacy? In addition to increasing your energy levels, continuous and daily physical activity can improve how you feel regarding your physical appearance, which may add the much-needed spark to your sex life. On top of that, it may improve arousal for women and reduce the risk of developing erectile dysfunction for men.

5. Fights Off Life-threatening Health Conditions and Diseases

 Are you looking for ways to prevent or manage serious health problems? Being physically active increases the level of “good” cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein) and reduces unhealthy triglycerides. This leads to a smooth flow of blood throughout the body, which lowers your risk of heart diseases. Regular physical activity does an excellent job of preventing or managing a wide range of other health problems like stroke, arthritis, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, various forms of cancer, and high blood pressure. More importantly, it can boost cognitive function and bring down the odds of death from nearly all causes.

6. Source of Fun and Social Life Improvement

 Regular exercise adds fun to your life. It offers you an opportunity to relax in a style, explore the outdoors, or just participate in fun-filled activities. It can help you build a strong bond with your friends or family members, especially when you’re exercising together in a fun social environment. So start cooking lessons, sign up for a dance class, or get some electric bike kits for an enjoyable ride. Look for an enjoyable physical activity and have fun.

7. Relax and Enjoy Quality Sleep

 Are you always tired? Do you struggle to fall asleep? Physical activity can help you unwind and get sufficient, restful sleep. The energy depletion that happens when you exercise accelerates the recuperative process as you sleep. People with sleep disorders can benefit from being active all the time.

Key Takeaways

Regular and daily physical activity provides amazing benefits that can enhance your overall health. It increases the levels of brain hormones, which can guarantee you a happy feeling and better sleep. It can help you combat serious health conditions, achieve your dream body, and make your sex life better.

By Lirika Hart

May 11, 2020

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How Exercising Supports Your Immune System

Cultivating a healthy immune system is the maiden step towards leading a healthy lifestyle and keeping illnesses away. The good thing is that knowingly or unknowingly, most people constantly boost their immunity by eating nutritious meals and exercising. The relationship between nutrition and increased immunity is pretty much straight forward. The relationship between immunity and exercising is, however, not clear to many.

Studies have shown that an average US adult suffers about three upper respiratory infections in a year. However, for populations that exercise moderately but regularly, their number of annual infections averages below 2. Scientists say that this can be attributed to the increased production of macrophages in the body when a person exercises. Macrophages are the cells responsible for fighting bacteria. 

Here are 3 more ways how exercising supports your immune system:

1. Reduced vulnerability to infections

The short term impact of exercise is helping your immune system find pathogens fast enough and deal with them before they start terrorizing your body. The long term impact is that exercising regularly slows down aging. Because aging is one of the key causes of deteriorating immunity, the spiral effect of slowing it down is a strong immune system. Both short and long term effects of regular exercise have aspects of lowering your risk of infections. 

Researchers also agree that a lowered immune system can come from psychological stress or insufficient sleep. Exercising is a known therapy for a troubled mind. When you exercise outdoors, say after running a mile in the woods, you come back home with reduced stress- happier than when you started running. Through lowering your stress levels, exercising boosts your immune system. Besides, working out makes your body tired, so you are able to sleep better and deeper at night. Lesser stress also means longer sleep durations. If insufficient sleep is a cause for lowered immunity, which can be cured by physical activity, it is true to say that exercising cures low immunity! 

2. Boosting your ability to fight with disease-causing bacteria

Regular exercise may aid the flushing of bacteria out of your lungs and airways. With the bacteria gone, your chances of contracting cold, flu, or other bacterial infections reduces significantly. 

Experts say that exercise causes the white blood cells, the body’s immune system cells that fight disease, to circulate more rapidly all over your body. The same happens to antibodies that detect illnesses in the body and alerts the white blood cells. This rapid movement means that the cells discover and fight off the disease-causing bacteria early enough thus preventing possible infections. 

Other studies show that the brief rise in body temperature that results from high-intensity workouts may prevent bacteria residing in your body from thriving. 

3. Exercise can lower your blood pressure 

How is the relationship between exercising, high blood pressure, and improved immunity? Well, according to multiple studies, regular physical activity strengthens your heart and enables it to pump more blood with less effort. That means reduced tension on your arteries and, by extension, lowered your blood pressure. 

Researchers have successfully studied the relationship between hypertension and immunity. The studies show that high blood pressure messes up immunity cells known as perivascular macrophages (PVMs) and interrupts blood delivery processes to different parts of the brain and other body parts. That means fewer white blood cells and lower disease-fighting abilities.

Conclusion

There is no denying that the immune system is very responsive to exercise. How much physical activity boosts your body’s immunity levels will depend on the extent and duration of the imposed physiological stress. More research is obviously needed in the area of exercise immunology to determine the exact clinical benefits of the exercise–immune connection. This is the perfect time to manage your time better and how you spend it. Finding out where your time goes is a great start. Spending time exercising is one of the best times you could spend.

Remember, exercise alone will not boost your immunity. You have to commit to a micronutrient-rich diet, practice good hygiene, and stay hydrated. 

We hope you found these tips for boosting your immune system with exercising helpful. If you are looking for a quick and easy workout for travel nurses click here.

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By Lirika Hart

January 30, 2020

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The Health Benefits Of Outdoor Activities

The physical and mental benefits of exercise are immense, but did you know that you can leverage these benefits more by exercising outside rather than indoors? Well, experts unanimously agree that outdoor activities exponentially boost your mental health, which makes your physical exercise even more fruitful. And because outdoor or green exercise is in most cases offered to you free by Mother Nature, you are able to save a lot compared to working out in the gym. Saving money is among the life accomplishments that enhance your mood and alleviates stress. With that in mind, let’s focus on 9 of the most notable health benefits of taking outdoor activities.

1. Improves your mental wellbeing

As we mentioned, your mental wellbeing greatly improves when you exercise outdoors. One of the reasons for this is the awareness that your mind has throughout the exercise, particularly in regard to the changing terrain and weather. Unlike in the gym where the floors are flat and benches evenly positioned, the terrain outdoor includes winding paths, hills, woods, and valleys. You are forced to be focused and alert at all times and that alone benefits your mental health.

2. Best way to get Vitamin D

Your bones and blood cells need a lot of calcium, phosphorus, and vitamin D for them to be healthy. Working out under the sunlight helps your body to absorb these minerals seamlessly. Also, getting 5-15 minutes of sun at least once in every two days gives your body all the Vitamin D it needs.

3. Boosts self-esteem

Your self-esteem increases exponentially when you spend time with friends doing different outdoor activities. This effect is particularly strong when you spend time near water, green areas, and within sounds of nature such as waterfalls. Walking along nature trails, fishing, and gardening, among other moderate-intensity physical activities, are important for your esteem as well. Playing with paintball guns is another worthy activity as it gives you a renewed sense of accomplishment, which is a major confidence boost.

4. Promotes memory

Nature walks have shown a significant relevance in memory retention among humans. Walking around trees, for example, promotes your memory by more than 20%.

5. Stress-reduction effects

Cortisol- the hormone that indicates the level of stress in humans- reduces greatly when you spend time in the forest, say, watching birds and taking part in low-intensity outdoor activities. Camping in the woods, for example, is a far much better activity than spending time in the city, especially for people who suffer from anxiety. It has also been scientifically proven that people who spend more time in the wild have a better heart rate than those who spend hours sitting in front of screens or in city traffic.

6. Reduces anxiety

As we have mentioned above, something about outside calming down an anxious mind. You will attest to this fact even if you aren’t fond of going out- you definitely have experienced the calming nature of Mother Nature even if it is through a house plant or pictures of nature. Many offices nowadays have nature wall arts hanging on office walls as a way of calming down angry, stressed, and anxious employees. If that works, then you can imagine the significance of being in the presence of that waterfall or mountain you see in office wall art. Nevertheless, if you continue having anxieties and the episodes don’t stop, you can hire the services of a life coach who can provide assistance and help you find calmness.

7. Improves the quality of your sleep

Your sleep cycle is dependent on the accurateness of your internal clock. If the clock isn’t working right, then you will have a hard time regulating your night sleep. The clock works right when the cells in your eyes get enough sunlight during the day, particularly before mid-day. That is why you need to be out as many minutes as possible in the morning hours. This requirement becomes more important as you get older.

 8. Boosts your immunity

 We mentioned that morning sunlight boosts your Vitamin D levels. The more the Vitamin D your body gets, the stronger its immune system becomes. On top of that, being within outdoor plants helps you leverage the health benefits of the phytoncides and other organic compounds that plants produce. These compounds boost immune function in humans.

9. Helps burn some unwanted fat

When you play outside- say, with paintball guns, you burn tons of calories and unwanted fats. And because being outdoor during the day helps you to sleep better, coupled with the fact that better sleep facilitates faster weight loss, the role of outdoor time in your physical fitness can never be overemphasized.

Conclusion

If you are a travel nurse, you probably spend hours indoors in front of a computer and under artificial lights. And because you are overwhelmed by work in the office, you don’t have enough time to catch up on news and social trends, so you spend your evening basking in the glory of social media and TV. It is to your best interest if you could end this harmful behavior. Get off the couch and take a walk of nature for a healthier lifestyle.

We hope that you found these benefits helpful. If you would like more information on outdoor activities, specifically hiking our article: Hiking Nurse: 9 Handy Hiking Tips for Adventurous Travel Nurses is a great resource.