Exercise Your Health Options

There’s nothing wrong with working out to look great. The true benefits of exercise are the ways it can make your health do a complete 180. Here are four ways working out can improve your life, and one important way it can’t.

Four Things Exercise Can Do…

It can help you stay lean better than dieting.

As we age, our diets often get better, and yet our waistlines still expand; all because we're exercising less, a study in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise found So to keep extra kilograms away, it's more important to maintain high levels of physical activity than to adjust your diet, they suggest. Both are important (duh), but exercise is the key.

It can fight the heart damaging effects of fat-ass food.

Performing a high intensity exercise (like jumping rope for Just eight minutes before tucking into a greasy meal can prevent the loss of blood vessel function that happens after you stuff your face full of fatness, researchers from England's University of Exeter found.

It can put the kibosh on cancer.

Keeping consistent with your cardio offers big health bonuses when you get older, new UVM research has found. The study of almost 14 000 men showed that high cardio-fitness in midlife meant a reduced chance of getting lung or colorectal cancer; as well as a 32% lower risk of dying from cancer later in life.

It can help you out in the sack.

Out of a sample of nearly 300 racially diverse men, those who reported doing the equivalent of at least two hours of strenuous exercise weekly, three and a half hours of moderate exercise, or six hours of light exercise, had higher overall sexual function scores than those who exercised less, the Journal of Sexual Medicine recently reported