How Does Exercising Affect Your Blood?

People are all made differently, and I say that in a quite literal manner.

In the past twenty years in the United States of America the adult obesity rate has been steadily climbing. At the time of this writing, one out of every three adults are obese within the country. Projections on the topic look grim as well with scientist, doctors and nutritionist alike speculating that by the year 2030 up to 42% of Americans could fall within the category of being obese. However, there is always a bright side to every situation one encounters. More people are starting to recognize the importance of exercise and the benefits it can bring to their health. More and more folks are starting to take control of their lives by simply being physically active.

How do you exercise?

I love exercising. When I’m not throwing around free weights in my apartment, I’m usually on my road bike taking a trek around downtown Canton and other surrounding communities. Recently, I actually just accomplished my longest bicycle ride ever – 85 miles in one day! Soon I’ll hit the century mark, though. The benefits of trying to become physically fit are well worth all the grunts in the gym, drops of sweat on your brow and any other soreness you might encounter.

The Ways Exercise Affects Your Blood and Cardiovascular System

Since much of the work Incept does is to help blood centers and blood banks recruit blood donors, I thought this might be an interesting topic to dive into.

Our body chemistry is always constantly changing, trying to keep a state of harmonious equilibrium within itself. When you exercise you are putting stress on your body. The human body, being the biologically engineered wonder that it is, will compensate for this stress in numerous different ways. Initially, your body is going to want more oxygen in order to produce energy more efficiently and effectively. When you exercise you are actually helping your body produce more red blood cells that end up carrying more oxygen throughout your bloodstream, to put it in simple terms.

Exercising also can be extremely beneficial for your cardiovascular system. The average resting heart rate is roughly 70 beats per minute. When you exert yourself in your exercises you are also raising your current heart rate depending on the activity. The higher your heart rate, the harder your heart is working to pump blood throughout your body in order to deliver oxygen. This really helps your cardiovascular system get a workout and can lead to benefits such as decreased risk of heart disease and stroke due to your veins expanding and contracting depending on the need for blood in certain areas ofyour body. This results in a healthy blood pressure. Fascinating, eh?

There are other benefits too, such as your body producing good cholesterol to carry bad cholesterol to the liver to be processed, proceesing blood glucose much more efficiently as energy (and not stored in fat cells), and impacting the way you look and feel. At the end of the day, one should try to make every effort possible to at least get some type of minimal physical activity into their daily routine.

How do you like to exercise? Do you lift weights? Ride a bike? Run? Let us know!