Why is it worth to exercise?

Panta rhei – by a paraphrase of the famous Heraclitus from Ephesus, one may say that life is movement. Well, if life is movement, why do we like a comfortable armchair and warm slippers so much? Why are thumb muscles becoming the most commonly used muscles? Throughout their species life, human had to fight for physical survival. They needed strength, speed, agility, endurance. Today, thanks to their mind, humans have created machines that work for them, they have built houses where they live, invented a car transferring them from place to place and finally a television and a computer, in front of which they sit for several hours a day. However, in the biological sense, this is the same man who centuries ago chased the mammoth with a club. To live, they must obey the basic law of nature, which is movement. Where the movement ends, death begins. Further progress in civilisation, science, culture and technology may solve many problems. It may even completely free human from manual labour and lead to a system of protection against unfavourable external conditions to excellence. However, you cannot fool nature! You cannot replace movement and physical effort, which are a condition for health, life and development, with anything! Human needs to understand the needs of their body, take care not to be degraded, organize their life so that physical movement and exercise are its permanent element.

Scientists agree on the fact that a human may live 120 years. Then why most people die long before this age, using on average no more than 70% of these opportunities? There are several reasons for that. Some of them are independent of human, while others depend only on their attitude. Various observations and studies prove that health is affected by such factors as:

• environment – ca. 20%
• genetic determinants – ca. 15%
• clinical medicine and the level of health care – ca. 10%
• lifestyle – ca. 53%

There is a range of evidence of the positive impact of exercise on health. Scientific research confirms that physical fitness contributes to prolongation and improvement of the life quality more than any other factor. Moderate physical activity reduces stress and the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, rectal cancer, obesity, osteoporosis and depression. There is no disease that prohibits movement. On the other hand, it is certain that no medicine may replace the movement.

If you are a student chased by life, or chasing after life – THINK ABOUT IT :)