Five Health Benefits of Jogging Everyone Should Be Aware of

Your body is the only thing you really have and it’s quite important to keep it healthy to live a fruitful life. Doing regular exercise is one of the best ways to keep your body healthy but due to time constraints or some other reasons, many people cannot join a gym or yoga classes. For such people, jogging can be a good option because it does not cost you anything and you can do it anytime that suits you.

Jogging is a part of aerobic exercise which includes running at a steady and slow pace, generally around less than six miles per hour. It’s an apt exercise for people who can’t go to the gym or yoga classes for some reasons including lack of time and money. Jogging is absolutely free and you can do it whenever you are free. The main aim of jogging is to maintain your tempo without giving your body too much strain because it’s less taxing and consumes little energy while providing many benefits. Here are five health benefits of jogging that everyone should be aware of.

Improves the Fitness of your Cardiovascular System

One of the benefits of jogging is that it improves the fitness of your cardiovascular system which includes your heart, lungs, and blood vessels. When you jog, the body increases the heart and breath rate to meet the demand for energy the body needs while jogging. It helps to provide high oxygen-rich blood to the muscles which the body uses for getting energy. It helps to get rid of waste products like carbon dioxide from the body. If you go jogging regularly, then it improves the function and strength of your cardiovascular system.

Losing Weight

If you are suffering from obesity or have extra body weight, then jogging is one of the best ways to lose weight. To lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume per day. Along with taking care of your nutrition, physical activity is also important to burn more calories than what you consume and jogging is one of the physical activities you can indulge in to burn calories. When you jog regularly, the body breaks down the fat to give a constant supply of energy. If you want to lose weight faster then you have to pick up your pace. It’s estimated that half an hour of jogging burns around 300 calories. A healthy diet and regular jogging will help you a lot to lose the extra weight you always wanted.

Make Bones Stronger

One of the main benefits of jogging includes maintaining bone health by affecting bone density along with improving muscle strength and endurance. Bone density means the amount of bone mineral available in the bone and high bone density improves the strength of the bones. Jogging helps to improve bone density which leads to better bone health and decreases the risk of getting bone-wasting diseases such as osteoporosis. When you jog, the bones experience some extra amount of stress and load. Jogging regularly makes the bones bear this extra stress which results in strengthening the bones and averting problems like bone trauma and injuries along with improving bone thickness. In addition, jogging makes the bones of the spine and hip stronger.

Helps to Keep Mental Problems in Control

Along with physical benefits, jogging also helps to keep mental health in control as it helps to calm and soothe the mind. It decreases stress and tension along with clearing the mind of unnecessary negative thoughts. Jogging improves mental health and averts the onset of mental diseases. Recent studies have shown that doing some sort of physical exercise including jogging helps to ease the symptoms of depression by decreasing the levels of cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone your body releases when you are under stress and the excess amount of cortisol may cause depression. Doctors advise people with symptoms of depression and anxiety to do some sort of physical exercise and jogging is a good option you can opt for.

Improves Muscle Strength

When you jog, many muscles of your body get contracted. The muscles of the lower extremities including the glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps,  and calves are mainly responsible for mobility. While jogging the legs push back and forth, the core and upper body muscles get activated to rotate and stabilise the body. Jogging regularly puts stress on these muscles, which forces the muscles to adapt and get stronger. Muscle strength will have beneficial effects on how you move and decrease the chances of injury.