why do our bodies feel worse when we lounge around all day?
In: Biology
Your body has a circulatory system. The heart, lungs, arteries, veins, and capillaries are like a pump and piping system for your body. Their job is to deliver oxygen and nutrients to all the cells of your body. When this system functions well, your body and all its cells are happy.
When you lay around all day you tend to breath shallow and have a low heart rate and blood pressure. This means your circulatory system isn’t pumping blood around your body super effectively. Oxygen and nutrients aren’t getting into all the nooks and crannies as well as they could be. This stagnation makes you feel lethargic and weak.
You might notice that if you haven’t exercised in awhile and you suddenly go for run you might get all itchy, particularly on your thighs, butt, and torso. This is because the increased activity is forcing blood into capillaries and activating nerves that haven’t been used in some time.
This is also why stretching, massage, and heat is good for recovery and injuries. It increases blood flow to the affected area and helps the healing process.
There are other psychological and physiological reasons but those are more complicated. Overall, your brain and body is happier with exercise and good blood flow.
EDIT: [HERE](https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness/runners-itch#takeaway) is a link talking about reasons for itchiness during exercise.
Your ancestors had to move to survive, thus your body evolved to be in motion.
For instance, you wouldn’t recognize it but our human calf muscles in the lower leg are massive (compared to four-legged animals) *because* they also act as pumps to help the heart bring blood way back up to where the heart is. If you don’t walk around some, your heart isn’t getting the natural assistance it evolved to expect from walking around and hunting.
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Moving moves your muscles which causes your heart to work harder. This is good because it’s a muscle, the most important muscle. By strengthening it our whole bodies are strengthened and work more efficiently so we can do tasks with less energy output. So we are less worn out in general. Also moving helps us break down food/nutrients our bodies need more efficiently by helping our digestion/metabolism. There is a lot more too it of course, but this is the start
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A body at rest stays at rest.
A body in motion stays in motion.
After a year of Covid, I now identify as an igneous rock.
Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands, they just don’t!
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