Physical Activity Can Help You Decrease Your Risk of Getting a Chronic Health Condition
Posted on September 16, 2014
Yesterday I talked about the impact of regular exercise on your weight. That is a great incentive to think about carving out 30 minutes of your day for exercise. But there’s more benefit!!!!
Did you know that being active boosts your high density lipoproteins (HDL) which is your good cholesterol and helps you decrease unhealthy triglycerides? This can help you to decrease your chances of getting heart disease, high blood pressure, and hypercholesterolemia. According to the Mayo Clinic, consistent exercise and activity can help you prevent a wide range of health conditions including stroke, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, depression, certain types of cancers, arthritis and falls.
If you have a chronic health condition, exercise and activity have a number of important health benefits for you. Not only can it help manage your symptoms, it can also boost your mood!!! And who doesn’t want that? Following are some of the benefits based on specific health conditions:
Diabetes: regular exercise can help to lower your blood sugar level and help you to manage your weight.
Heart Disease: strength training in combination with aerobic activity can slow disease related decline in muscle strength and improve your overall endurance.
Arthritis: activity can help reduce pain by increasing blood flow to affected joints and reduce joint stiffness.
Back Pain: low impact activity can increase strength, endurance and help maintain range of motion by improving muscle functioning. In addition, back and abdominal exercises can reduce symptoms by strengthening the muscles around the spine and stretching can help maintain flexibility.
For more information on what exercises are safe, visit Mayoclinic.org, Exercise and Chronic Disease: Get the Facts.
Always be sure to talk with your doctor before starting an exercise program. Your doctor may have important advice on what exercises or activities are safe for you and precautions you might need to be aware of while exercising.
If you are an HNE member, you have access to HNE’s Healthy Directions Member Wellness Program. The Healthy Directions program offers all members, aged 18 and older, a free online health portal. The portal is powered by WebMD and offers an online health assessment, a health record, wellness library, videos, interactive health coaching and much more. Members who complete the health assessment and get their biometric screenings get entered into a monthly and year-end raffle. Biometric screenings provide measurements of your health that can help you work toward maintaining or improving your health status.
To learn more about Healthy Directions:
• First time users visit webmdhealth.com/hne and click on register
• Returning users visit webmdhealth.com/hne and log in to begin
Join me tomorrow when I talk about how regular exercise can decrease your risk of a chronic health condition.
If you haven’t taken my weekly quiz on staying active yet, click on the button below!
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