6 Benefits of Cardiovascular Exercises

Running, cycling, dancing, hiking- there are many fun ways to do cardiovascular exercise. The options are unlimited. When cardiovascular exercises are a part of your workout routine, and along with diet, it will increase your regular blood pressure when resting. Moreover, this would also mean that your heart doesn’t have to work hard all the time. But how often should you do cardio to reap the health benefits it has?

The American Heart Association recommends people to work out at least 150 minutes of moderate to hard intensity workout. Or, you can allocate 75 minutes if you want to go all out on vigorous-intensity cardio on most days of the week. If you want a more estimated schedule, you can have 30-minute cardio five or more days in a week or 10-minute cardio five to seven days a week.

However, most people despise cardio workouts because they are very tiring and can also be boring. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make it fun. To inspire you to finally hit the gym, here are some proven benefits of cardiovascular exercises

Weight Loss

One of the most common reasons people go for cardio exercises is that cardio exercises can help you lose weight. Cardio is great because it can help you trim down fat and lose more calories. Along with an excellent balanced diet, you can achieve this quite easily. 

Cardio alone can help you burn calories by the hundreds in one session, and if you pair it up with a balanced diet, you will be in great shape in time for the next summer season to roll out.

Improves Cardiovascular Health

Cardio is recommended by the American Heart Association and multitudes of healthcare professionals to people at risk or who already have cardiovascular disease. The main reason for this is that cardio helps strengthen the heart to make it more efficient in pumping blood throughout the body. 

You can go dancing, kickboxing, or even running. You don’t even have to go outside since you can just do it on a solid and reliable treadmill that you can buy through online means.

Cardio can also help decrease blood pressure and keep your arteries clear by raising the number of good cholesterol and decreasing the bad type of cholesterol.

It Improves Mood

Our mood fluctuates daily. But if you’re stressed out and want to improve your mood for the better regularly, you might want to start cardio exercises or working out in general. 

Hampstead personal trainer Pete Gaffney says “not only does working out help combat depression, but it also improves your self-esteem and releases tension-fighting hormones like dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. So the next time you feel down or crappy in general, don your exercise outfit and do some cardio because not only will it improve your health, it will also improve your mood.”

Improves Sleep

There’s a huge reason why people often feel energized after doing cardio or working out in general. Physical activity helps your body by helping it release more endorphins, which gives you lasting energy throughout the day. 

If you’re looking to sleep early tonight, it may seem counterproductive, but if you had cardio for an exercise for the day, cardio could help you feel a lot sleepier as it helps you doze out faster and even promotes REM sleep.

However, do take note that you need to avoid vigorous exercise too close to your bedtime, or you’ll have a hard time falling asleep. Also, by doing cardio and having a lot of sleep, your immune system will thank you, improving it more efficiently.

Improves Workout Efficiency

As you begin to do a mixture of typical workouts and cardio activity, your body would take a while to adjust to a faster routine. But the more routine this workout gets, the faster your body would get oxygen from its blood during your workout sessions. 

Because of this, your body would be more efficient during your exercise and every time you are stressed. The bottom line here is that your body would be able to recover faster during stress.

Improves the Immune System

Nobody wants to get sick. It makes us miss out on important events, and the worst part about it is that it often happens during the worst of times. However, it doesn’t have to be this way all of the time. The question here is not how you avoid being sick but how you improve your immune system. 

The answer to that is cardio. Of course, that’s not the only way to improve your immune system, but it’s one of the most efficient ones. That said, with regular cardio, your antibodies and white blood cells will move around faster, which makes it more efficient in finding potential illnesses.

Final Words

There are a lot more reasons why you should try out cardio. It gives out benefits all around your body just for a reason it makes your heart stronger. Thus, if you’re considering trying out cardiovascular exercises, you might want to start now for the reasons listed above. And the best thing about cardio is that there are a lot of ways to do it.