Final Draft Research Paper

         Have you ever wondered why exercise is so important? You hear commercials and read newspapers always telling you that exercise is the key to a healthy lifestyle, but they never tell you why. You wonder, “How is exercise supposed to help my body?” Most people understand that exercise will help you lose weight (along with healthy eating habits), but what if they do not want to lose weight? Many people believe that if they just eat healthy and don’t exercise their body is still considered healthy, but this far from true.

Exercising has many positive effects on your body outside of just losing weight. Exercise affects your heart, lungs, bones, joints, and the circulation of blood, but it does not just affect your physical health; it also affects your mental health and lowers the risks of many diseases and fractures or aches. People who do not exercise have an increased risk of falling, which can be problematic. People who do not exercise also have an increased risk of obesity and early death compared to the average person. Exercise is not only important for losing weight, but is extremely important for keeping your body healthy. Exercise has a positive effect on every organ, bone, and muscle in your body.

            One organ in your body that exercise will positively affect both immediately and in the long term is your heart. Your resting heart rate should be anywhere between sixty and one-hundred beats per minute. While exercising, your heart rate should increase greatly but can never go over two-hundred twenty beats per minute. Also, during exercise, your heart rate will increase because more blood and oxygen is needed to supply the body, which will also give you more energy to complete the workout. The faster your heart beats, the faster blood and oxygen will circulate around your body and the more energy you will produce (Freudenrich).  Exercise does not just have immediate effects on your heart; it also has long term effects. Due to exercising, your resting heart rate will decrease and your heart will become bigger in size. Your resting heart rate will decrease because your heart is receiving and delivering more blood to the rest of your body per beat (Robinson). So, instead of delivering a small amount of blood and oxygen and beating many times, your body now delivers a large amount of oxygen and blood per beat so it is required to beat less times per minute. Since fewer heart beats are needed to supply your body with the resources it need, your heart will start beating fewer times per minute over time. Another long term effect is that your heart will enlarge (Robinson).This is because it will get used to needing extra space for more blood and oxygen to be stored and utilized during a hard workout. A bigger heart means more room for blood to be stored and the faster the flow of blood throughout your body.  As you can see, exercising has a chain of positive effects on your heart that can keep your body healthy, alive, and well.

            Another organ that exercise has a great impact on is your lungs. Your lungs take in the oxygen which is then transported to all parts of your body. During a workout of any kind your lungs will need more oxygen. This is due to the fact that you need more energy for your body to complete the movements or task at hand. When exercising, your rate of breathing will increase as well as the depth or capacity of oxygen intake. “The rate and depth of your breathing will increase because…” (Freudenrich). This is because your lungs need more oxygen to support your body and its physical activity. “In the lungs, oxygen concentration is high and carbon dioxide concentration is low due to breathing more” (Freudenrich) This means that there is much more oxygen in your lungs then carbon dioxide while exercising because the carbon dioxide is a waste product and the oxygen is needed to be converted into energy, which is certainly a necessity when in motion. “The amount of oxygen delivered to the lungs increases.” (Freudenrich) More oxygen must be delivered to the lungs so that your body can convert this oxygen into energy, which will be used during any physical activity. The way in which oxygen can be circulated throughout your body is with the help of a protein called hemoglobin. “A protein called hemoglobin, which is found in red blood cells, carries most of the oxygen in the blood.” (Freudenrich) Hemoglobin helps to move the oxygen through the lungs and supply your entire body with oxygen instead of just one area. If oxygen was not moved to all areas of your body, you may find yourself always falling asleep even when you received a full 10 hours of sleep the previous night. You also may also feel fatigued and aching. At all times your body needs more oxygen than carbon dioxide. To ensure that this is always true your body will need the help of hemoglobin. “Hemoglobin releases oxygen and binds carbon dioxide” (Freudenrich). Your lungs play a major part in helping your body intake oxygen when exercising. Exercise is important to keep your lungs active and healthy.

            Exercise can also affect your joints by keeping them healthy. It is often a misconception that exercise such as running puts too much stress on joints and will eventually cause problems (Exercise and Your Joints, 1). To stay healthy, joints need to be constantly in motion. If your joints our inactive for a long period of time, they start to tighten up. Though running may not be a necessity, exercising certainly is. Even just walking around the block a couple times each day can stop joints from tightening up. “Long periods of inactivity cause the arthritic joints to stiffen...” (Exercise and Your Joints, 1)Many kids today would much rather sit on their phones or play video games inside rather than take a walk or go for a bike ride with friends. These kids will be more likely to have arthritis because of their constant inactivity. Many people make excuses not to exercise such as saying that running will put too much pressure on their knees but research has shown that there is absolutely no connection between exercise and arthritic knees (Exercise and Your Joints, 1).

            All of the bones in your body are always needed to help protect your body. As many people know, drinking milk is a great way to increase the calcium and strength of your bones but that is not the only way. Exercise can increase your bone and muscle mass to keep your body well protected. At different ages, exercise can affect your bone mass indifferent ways. “Exercise is important for building stronger bones when we are younger and it is essential for maintaining bone strength when we are older” (Campbell). As a kid, especially boys, you are often found doing something that could be harmful to your body such as jumping off the slide instead of sliding down. You do not understand the harmful effects so you will often keep jumping off until something bad happens. Sometimes it will just be a bruise but other times it can be something more serious. With the help of strong bones, you are less likely to have broken a bone from jumping off the slide and more likely to have just a small bruise. Bones can help protect your body from the dangerous actions you may try by increasing the bone mass. A thin pencil is a lot easier to break in half than a thick tree trunk. “In the elderly, physical activity no longer increases bone mass, but it can slow bone loss, and maintain muscle mass to preserve and strengthen surrounding bone…” (Campbell) Ever wonder why your grandparents are always so fragile, or why they need a cane to walk? This is because there bones are too weak to support their body. The more time you exercise as a kid the more bone mass you have to lose as an elderly. For example, let’s say you have 100 cookies and eat one each day. This means you will have 100 days’ worth of cookies. But now if you only have 50 cookies and you eat 1 each day you will only have 50 days’ worth of cookies. The cookies represent the amount of bone mass you gained as a child and each time you eat one that is the amount you have lost. The more bone mass you gain as an adolescent, the more time you will have to walk on your own, without a cane or any help, as an elderly. “The best time to build bone density is during the years of rapid growth…ages of 10-18 years old” (Campbell)  So next time you decide to watch television instead of going for a hike remember the long term effect this will have on your bones. Wouldn’t you much rather be that cool grandparent that plays Dance Dance Revolution with their grandchildren rather than sitting on your couch not being able to get up without help?