Health Essay


There are many ways that one can benefit from staying physically fit. The first benefit that I would like to address for the purposes of this essay is that physical activity increases the amount of endorphins produced by your body. Endorphins are chemicals that are produced by your pituitary glands. They are neurotransmitters that travel through your bloodstream to your brain. Endorphins contribute to your level of happiness and so people who are physically active are generally happier than people that are not and thus they are less likely to suffer from things like stress and depression. I don’t suffer from either of those but perhaps that can be attributed to my proficient physical exercising! Many times Doctors will even prescribe different exercises to patients who suffer from stress or depression to help them fight the symptoms. The second health benefit is that staying physically fit is good for your heart. My family has a history of heart disease on my mother’s side so I realize how important it is to stay physically fit. The third health benefit that I would like to point out is that exercising helps to stimulate the formation of neuronal connections in the brain and so people who are physically active are actually smarter than if they just did nothing. The way this works is that when you learn things your brain creates neuron connections that help it send signals faster. The more connections of neurons you have in your brain the smarter you are. When you exercise you are basically teaching your brain about different things like coordination and agility. This creates more new connections between neurons and helps your brain to process information quickly. Interestingly the connections that your brain makes for doing things like walking can also carry signals generated by neurons that have nothing to do with walking because each neuron can have thousands of connections. There is currently a lot of research going into finding out why this happens but for now we will all just have to be satisfied knowing that exercise makes us smarter!
After high school I don’t plan on doing any sports or anything but I will probably stay physically active by biking. I bike different places all the time because it is a lot less expensive than taking a car because you don’t have to waste money on gas; especially if you are just going to a friends house. I don’t think that there is anywhere that I go in Hampden that would take me more than ten minutes on a bicycle that and considering that my top speed on a bike averages at 18 miles per hour I feel like I could do pretty well if I ever needed to go that far but like I said hampden is a small town. I also like riding a bike because I like being ‘green’ or environmentally friendly. The earth is my favorite place so I try to do my best not to pollute it.
Besides the economic and environmental advantages of biking, there are also many physical advantages. One major advantage is that this is a great cardiovascular exercise. When you pedal a bike you are using more leg muscles than you would if you were just walking. Using your muscles is good for blood flow as well as getting your heart pumping. All of this contributes to your physical health and it will allow you to live a long life full of vitality.
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