Feel the Burn: What does exercise actually do to your body?

Ask any doctor what the top five things are that you can do to protect your health and they are likely to rhyme off a bunch of stuff you already knew. Eat healthy, unprocessed foods. Sleep at least 7 hours a night. Avoid stress. But few things are as likely to appear on virtually every list as exercise. From the time we are in grade school right up until our teachers give us the boot at prom we are encouraged to participate in physical education and exercise. But why? What does exercise actually do to your body that is so great anyway?

Everyone hates their first day of exercise, and for good reason. Day one is really hard. That is because our bodies have a tendency to do the bare minimum in terms of upkeep. If the hardest thing you do all day is climb 5 steps in front of the building you work at before hopping in the elevator, that is what your body will prepare you for. When you take a body that is used to a sedentary lifestyle and force it to exercise, you shock the system. That is why it is so important to do your research before taking on anything too strenuous. If you think you might have a heart condition or some other underlying problem, you might even want to talk to a doctor.

The great thing about exercise, however, is that it begins to change your body very quickly. Within the first few weeks (if you stick with it) your body will begin to adapt at the cellular level. Each of your body’s cells contains mitochondria which break down carbohydrates and fats and turn them into energy. Regular exercise spurs your body on to pack as many mitochondria into cells as it can. That means the food you eat is more likely to turn into energy than to be stored as fat.

In addition to a mitochondrial population boost, your entire circulatory system becomes more beefy. When you exercise, and especially when you’re starting out, your muscles are basically screaming for oxygen and your body is doing whatever it can to get it there. Oxygen travels in our blood, so one way to carry more oxygen to the muscles that need it is to make more blood. According to BodyBuilding.com, exercise can add an extra half litre of blood to your body. The heart itself also gets stronger as it is called on to pump more blood quicker. Over time the heart will even increase in size to allow each pump to carry the maximum amount of blood.

Finally, in terms of blood, your body adapts to exercise by improving the highway along which it is carried. As you exercise regularly your blood vessels become better at constricting and relaxing. They become more elastic and let blood flow through them more smoothly. Over time your body even builds more of the tiny vessels called capillaries that supply muscles directly. This, along with a stronger heart, is one of the main ways exercise adds years to your life. The idea is that by forcing your heart to work hard in short bursts, it won’t have to work as hard on average over your whole life. Trained people generally have slower resting heart rates and don’t develop heart disease as often as untrained people.

Exercise also damages your body in a way that ends up working to your benefit. Each hard workout produces small tears in your muscles. As your body works to rebuild the gaps between the tears your muscles get bigger. The result is that there are more fibers that are better able to contract and relax, meaning they can produce more force, making you stronger.

Finally, one of the biggest benefits of exercise is also one of the least expected: it makes your brain work gooder! Believe it or not, studies have shown that exercise encourages your brain to build connections between neurons and can even stimulate the growth of new brain cells, something that was long thought to be impossible in adults. Regular aerobic exercise has been linked to increased brain volume in areas like the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory. The upshot is that if you go for a run today, you’re more likely to remember where your keys are on your 90^th birthday.

Ultimately exercise does a lot beyond what we’ve had time to cover here. If there is a miracle method to achieve better health, feel better, look better, and live longer it is working up a sweat. As much as we all want to believe we can get ripped and live forever by taking a pill or buying one of those belt things that electrocutes your abs, the only way to get there is by putting in the work.