Have you ever wondered what it means to have good physical health? Is it about having abs or intimidating muscles? Actually, no. Environmental exercise is not about cutting back calories or achieving the perfect hourglass figure. It is a conscious lifestyle choice that helps you ace life with a sharp mindset and better health. Moreover, exercise can positively affect your environmental health and make this world a better place for all. Let’s discuss the environment-friendly exercises in detail along with their positive effects.
1. Environmental Factors Affecting Human Behavior
Over the years, you must have heard that a man is gravely affected by his social and environmental settings. Improper lighting, limited access to nature, dark-colored walls, air contamination, and noise pollution all plot together to make this life a living hell. Some factors which can improve human behavior and mood are given below:
- Several top-ranking studies support the positive effects of sunlight on human psychology. Patients with well-lit rooms and big windows with proper daylight show more promising recovery signs than others.
- Color therapy suggests yellow color as the happiest and mood-enhancing color. It is recognized as possessing the psychological powers of the yellow sun and thus, making people happy.
- Increased access to green environments and colors in all forms also affects human behavior. They become more relaxed, calm, and self-disciplined, and exercise better control in adverse situations.
2. Benefits of Environmental Exercise Over Gyms
Physical exercise has been around long before humans could allot a name to any activity. It only became a secondary option when four-walled congested gyms were introduced. Despite that, health experts often suggest parks as a much better alternative since they offer a treat to your eyes as well as your soul. The benefits of environmental exercise over gyms are:
- Unlike premium gym memberships that may cost you an arm, environmental exercises are free of cost. Moreover, AC gyms are not so good if you take a look at their side effects.
- Exercising outdoors combines sunbathing for a beautiful tan with absorbing Vitamin D at an unprecedented rate. Apart from Vit D, the outdoor benefits of exercise can positively affect your environmental health, hence improving it for a longer period of time.
- Parks offer better oxygen quality infused with the sweet aromas of the flowers and the crispness of the cold air.
- It helps you expand your social circle and connect with like-minded people to participate in marathons, Zumba classes, or yoga workshops.
- Environmental exercise boosts feel-good chemicals in the brain factory and helps you manage everyday hardships with patience and perseverance.
- Originating in Sweden, plogging combined with jogging (with litter picking) can shoot down two birds with a stone, thus making an impact on your health.
3. Top 5 Physical Benefits of Exercising
There is no doubt that consistency shows better and unexpected results but at a slow pace. People who have been practicing yoga are calmer and more serene than others. Although the scientific research behind its benefits is at its preliminary stage, one cannot avoid it completely. To know how exercise can positively affect your environmental health, check out the following benefits:
- Diabetes management: By monitoring and controlling your sugar levels, exercise helps in regulating Type-II diabetes.
- Pregnancy aid: Kegel exercises help women control their urine during pregnancy by training their pelvic floor muscles.
- Cardiovascular benefits: Daily moderate to intensive physical activity boosts your cardiovascular health. It lowers your high BP, maintains heart palpitations, and reduces heart stroke chances significantly.
- Nature’s emergency: Exercise can positively affect your environmental health as well as improve bowel movements and make nature’s call less energy-straining.
- Avoiding cancer: According to some studies, a consistent workout routine can help people in reducing the risk of specific cancer types. However, the evidence is not enough to support this claim.
4. Link Between Environment and Exercise
Only a few are aware that the benefits of exercise affect the environment in the same manner as human activities affect their surroundings. Can’t believe it? To begin with, more people ditching gyms mean less deforestation since they no longer require space to open more. Moreover, in a city where cycling is more popular than expensive personal automobiles, pollution will be significantly less. In this way, the benefits of exercise affect the environment and can show more physical and mental improvement compared to gyms. Also, see Why is the Environment Important?
In the same manner, fewer roads and more luscious mountains with green parks and beautiful flowers will be visible. The population of bees, birds, and insects will increase as their natural nectar resource (flowers and some leaves too) increase significantly. Accordingly, pollination will increase which prevents a shortage of food grains for human survival.
5. 6 Types of Environment-friendly Exercises
It may be tricky to bid farewell to standard gyms and at-home workout machines but it is not impossible. Here are some environment-friendly exercises for beginners to incorporate into their daily life routines.
- Aerobics: Activities like swimming, cycling, and brisk walking improve your lung’s oxygen intake capacity and stimulate the cardiovascular system. The range of options gives you something new to try out every day without getting bored.
- Zumba: Zumba combines a popular Latin American dance form with cardio to hit the entire body. It is energizing and perfect for people who can follow choreography easily.
- Plogging: This is a Swedish portmanteau that combines jogging with picking up trash on the way. Plogging is majorly enjoyed by environmental activists and is a great way of making cleaning more productive.
- Yoga: Yoga is usually preferred for its calming properties by people throughout the globe. Although born in ancient India, people in this tech-savvy world prefer yoga over expensive therapy sessions and treatments. It includes breathing exercises, asanas, and meditation to combine the power of the three and improve your lifestyle.
- Hiking: Hiking gives you the pleasure of following captivating trails or mesmerizing long paths in the countryside. It takes you away from city life’s hustle and bustle and makes walking for pleasure a fun activity. Thus, exercise can positively affect your environmental health and make everything pleasant for your eyes.
- Yard work: Working out does not require expensive gym machinery or memberships. Instead, you can train your body any time you wish with what you already have. For instance, mowing the grass, raking dried leaves, and removing weeds are other good options.
- Power walking: Power walking is also known as speed walking. As the name suggests, a person during power walking walks with a speed range that is above the standard speed. According to health experts, 30-minutes of power walking three days a week is a good start for beginners.
6. Exercise Makes Your Mood Merrier
Our negligence has always mitigated the importance of mental health. People often fail to understand how crucial a happy and fulfilled mind is for a good life. This is what we need to teach the young generation- the unavoidable aspect of putting your mental happiness first. Continue reading to know how regular exercise can positively affect your environmental health and boost your mental state:
- Exercise is nature’s antidepressant as it shows a considerable improvement in mild to moderate depression.
- Regular workouts prevent diagnosed patients from relapsing.
- It disrupts the flow of negative thoughts by providing a healthier and more energized alternative.
- Consistent workouts release endorphins and endogenous CBD-like chemicals in your brain to relieve anxiety and extreme mood swings.
- Light stretching and brisk walking reduce muscle tension, cramps, and the unanticipated heart-throbbing feeling.
- It boosts dopamine and serotonin levels while improving muscle memory, concentration, and overall mood.
- Physical activities guarantee better sleep, enhanced resilience, and a boost of self-confidence.
It is never too late to make yourself a priority and introduce changes that help in becoming a better version. After all, your biggest competition is you. Now that you know how exercise can positively affect your environmental health and reap the most out of life, it is time to give it a go. We hope this article gave you what you were looking for and more. To learn more about it, you can check out another blog- How can Exercise Positively affect your Environmental Health?
