On a cellular level, how does exercise make us healthy or improve our health?
In: Biology
This is the ELI5 version.
When your body is just sitting around there’s still a lot of stuff you’re body is doing. When you exercise your body has to be able to do those normal sitting around things better and faster to be able to keep up with the demands of exercising. If you do that enough times your body realizes it’s not doing a great job and needs to get better at doing those basic body functions and it send the signal to your body hey everybody we need to do better everyone start improving things. As this happens and your body gets a lot of practice operating at a higher level it means it’s a breeze to do the sitting around part and in general your body is less stressed just sitting around because it’s so much easier. Stress is okay in short bursts it reminds us we have to be better but constant stress with no break is bad for our bodies because it means we’re always working hard without a break. And when we actually do need to work hard we can’t because we’re maxed out and at risk of breaking down.
There’s so many factors that benefit individual cells with excercise that most of the answers here are all right.
The most basic explanation is that excercise allows cells more access to nutrients and ATP(energy molecule) by increasing blood flow and the number of mitochondria in cells(ATP makers). The other major part is that it prevents and reverses multiple disease processes which would harm those cells.
It depends on the exercise. Weight training strengthens your muscles, bones, and connective tissues. It can all trigger releases of testosterone and human growth hormone. A lot of “bad backs”, “bum knees” and “jacked up shoulders” can be fixed by physical therapy and then continuing to do activities that require strength.
Cardio generally helps by lowering insulin resistance.
I see a lot of answers focusing on things like strength and overall fitness, so let me try for a metabolic answer.
Your cells operate on a little form of energy that comes from food. Fat is storage for this energy, and it comes from eating more food (thus having more energy) than needed.
Exercise is basically the opposite. By exercising, you body needs more energy. Because of this, your cells will likely burn more energy than you gained from eating. In order to supply this demand, they take from the storage of energy (fat) and burn that, reducing the fat in your body.
Note: you can achieve the same effect by eating less.
You are made up of small stuffa called cells. When you excercise your train sends signals to different organs telling them “Hey, this ape human is doing work, they need more power, produce more power”, so the organs do their own things to produce more power, thus improving your overall body by gradually making it more compatible for you to do more work.
But you also need to eat properly, otherwise the cells will be like “Hey brain, you tell us to produce energy but this pae human gets no nutrients to us, so we dying doing so much work” and isntead of becoming healthy you become weak. Excercise is healthy only if you take proper diet, if you wish to remain without food for weeks then for staying relatively healthy you need to stop excercising.
On a cellular level, you grow new muscle cells- not just obvious ones like in the arms and legs, but in the heart as well.
A stronger heart doesn’t have to work as hard when you’re at rest.
Exercise also reduces fat deposits on important organs like the liver and heart, which can make them not work as well if those deposits get too big.
And finally exercise makes your body release chemicals which improve your mood and help you sleep more regularly.
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