Most individuals concur that risky behaviors include driving when intoxicated, smoking, and swallowing a sword. Surprisingly, sometimes doing no action at all—not tensing, not exercising a muscle—can be just as lethal.
Not exercising or even inactivity in general has been linked to an increased chance of dying young. Researchers discovered that the least fit individuals had a 500% higher chance of premature death. This risk was determined by a treadmill test. Here are a few risky consequences of not exercising that can spur you to leave the couch and work up a sweat.
Can be challenging for you to get a decent night’s sleep.
It may not seem like a big deal if you can’t sleep well or wake up frequently at night. However, if it occurs frequently, it can lead to a variety of health issues, including poor immunity, emotional disorders, accidents, weight gain, diabetes, and heart disease.
Poor sleep as a result of inactivity can therefore be fatal. Have you ever slept off for the longest, most restorative sleep after, paddling a kayak, hiking ten miles or running a marathon? Vigorous exercise is a highly effective drug-free sleep aid, especially when performed outside.
Your blood pressure could rise.
Your heart pumps more effectively when you exercise. A healthy heart requires less effort to pump blood, which results in less force being applied to your arteries. If you are not exercising, your cardio-respiratory fitness (CRF) gradually declines.
You’ll probably get heart disease.
Heart disease, which affects up to 6 million Americans, can still result from not exercising even if you don’t have any of the traditional risk factors for the condition, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or obesity.
Your memory might not function as well.
Exercise to encourage neuroplasticity, the brain’s capacity to create new neural connections and adapt over the course of a lifetime. Studies have shown that the hippocampus, which controls memory and executive functions, is one of the regions of such expansion.
Your endurance will be destroyed.
I’d think that professional kayakers are a fairly fit group of people. So take a look at this study that assessed participants’ VO2 max following a five-week training hiatus. The test for assessing an athlete’s cardiovascular fitness is called VO2 max, which measures the maximum quantity of oxygen a person can consume during an intensive exercise. The participants’ VO2 max decreased on average by 11.3% after the five-week break from kayak training.
You could sink into depression.
In the meantime, exercise is a recognized drug-free treatment for depression and anxiety disorders. But might being inactive increase the likelihood of developing depressed symptoms even in the absence of depressive symptoms? Numerous observational and interventional research were analyzed to determine whether or not physical activity helped prevent depression. While some of those research demonstrated that both low- and high-intensity exercise were useful in lowering the risk of depression, others discovered that strenuous exercise had the strongest effects.
You’ll probably put on weight.
The majority of health professionals concur that eating habits, rather than activity volume, are more important for weight gain or decrease. But a lot of studies has indicated a link between obesity and a sedentary lifestyle. Researchers from Stanford University examined the long-term outcomes of more than 17,000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey participants in one such study.
According to the analysis, the number of persons who said not exercising in their spare time increased from 11% to 43% for men and from 19% to 52% for women between 1988 and 2010.
Read here my morning routine list that helps me build and stack other habits when i’m not exercising.
