How valuable is exercise to your health?

We all know that exercise is an important way to safeguard your health. But how, exactly? In this episode, Marshall discusses the health benefits of exercise -- and how much we need each week in order to take advantage of these benefits.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works dot com
where smart happens. H I am Marshall Brain with today's question,
how important is exercise? And I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know about exercise. It's

(00:21):
like smoking, you aren't supposed to smoke. And it's like
being obese, you aren't supposed to gain weight. You're supposed
to exercise. But why what effects do exercise actually have?
And a recent study looks at this and discovers that
exercise is incredibly important to health. It points out that

(00:41):
people who exercise decrease the risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke, dementia, depression, obesity,
type two diabetes, and high blood pressure, among other things.
If you go to Science Daily and look at their
article on this particular study, it says people who take

(01:02):
regular exercise could reduce their risk of developing around two
dozen physical and mental health conditions, including some cancers and dementia,
and slow down how quickly their body deteriorates as they age,
which sounds pretty good. You know, if you think about it,
you go out and you do a little exercise and
you can reduce the risk of all these different things,

(01:25):
plus help yourself to live longer. There's a lot to
like about that. So the obvious next question is how
much exercise are you supposed to get if you want
to take advantage of all of these great benefits. So
you go over to the American Heart Association website and
you can find out the answer to that question. You're
supposed to try to get at least a hundred and

(01:47):
fifty minutes of moderate exercise per week, and moderate exercise
usually translates into something like walking, or it could be
bike riding or jogging if you want to put out
some extra effort. But walking is enough, and they'd like
you to be doing more than that. But a hundred
and fifty minutes a week is the minimum. And a

(02:10):
hundred and fifty minutes a week of walking translates into
taking a half hour walk five days a week, which
really doesn't sound that bad. So you're gonna go out
every day and you're gonna walk for half an hour,
and that's gonna be about a mile and a half
or two miles if you walk at a really brisk pace.
If you want to do more, that's even better. The

(02:30):
American Heart Association would love for you to do some
weightlifting of some sort, and they'd be ecstatic if you
did some cardios stuff as well, something that causes you
to work up a sweat and to breathe deeply. But
if you don't want to do that stuff, it's fine.
Just the walking can have an amazing beneficial effect on
your health. As you know that list of things cancer,

(02:54):
heart disease, stroke, dementia. Getting rid of those kinds of
things with a simple walk every day it sounds like
a pretty good deal. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, esit how stuff works dot com, and
don't forget to check out the brain stuff blog on
the how stuff Works dot com home page. You can
also follow brain stuff on Facebook or Twitter at brain

(03:14):
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