Indulging in regular swimming is one of the ways of adopting a healthy lifestyle. Swimming regularly can give anyone and particularly adults a wide variety of health benefits among them a feeling of youthfulness. The top ten health benefits of swimming include the following:
1. Swimming less but doing more
Swimming is the only exercise that enables you to engage every part of your body without putting so much pressure on the skeletal system. Any time our bodies are underwater, they become lighter automatically. When the bodies are immersed in the water up to the waist, they bear only half of the total weight. Thus, swimming is the best approach to exercise especially for those with stiff muscles as well as sore joints. It is mainly recommended for those with arthritis.
Swimming is considered an excellent way of increasing your muscle strength as well as tone. Compared to other exercises or workouts, swimming is a better resistance exercise since as a swimmer, you have to propel yourself through water, which is 12 times denser than air. Resistance exercises enable us to increase our muscle build, tone, and strength.
3. Flexibility
Exercise machines are known to isolate a part of a body at a time in the course of working out. Swimming on the contrary subjects the entire body into a variety of motions that help the joints as well as ligaments in the body to loosen as and stay flexible. Your arms move in broad arcs, hips, and legs scissor through water, the spine and the head are made to twist from one side to another and the rest of the body is lengthened by the forward strokes.
4. Heart health
Other than toning the other muscles of your body, swimming is the best way of maintaining the health of your heart. Since this exercise is aerobic, it works towards strengthening the heart. Not only will your heart enlarge but also brings about more efficient pumping hence better flow of blood to the rest of the body.
5. Weight control and maintenance
It is possible to burn calories in water even though water is usually generally cooler than our bodies. The amount of calories an individual burns exactly depends on the intensity of the exercise and their own physiology. Generally, 10 minutes of swimming using the breaststroke enables you to burn about 60 calories. The backstroke helps you burn 80 calories and the freestyle 100 calories within the same time frame.
Exercising in the dry air environment like the gym makes you susceptible to seasonal allergies. The swimming pool on the contrary gives you a surrounding full of moist air thus helping in reducing asthma symptoms usually induced by exercise. For those who do not suffer from asthma attacks, swimming is great as well since it increases the volume of the lungs as well as teaches proper techniques of breathing.
7. Improved cholesterol
When you are healthy, it means that you have the right level of cholesterol in your body. Low or high levels are detrimental to your health. However, it is advantageous to have spiked levels of good cholesterol (HDL) and smaller amounts of bad cholesterol (LDL). Swimming is an excellent way of checking and balancing these levels due to the aerobic power it possesses. It thus lowers the risk of heart disease.
8. Lower diabetes risk
Aerobic exercises are generally known to lower our risk of diabetes. For those with type I diabetes, swimming, and other aerobic exercises have positive health implications. Swimming is helpful in the sense that it increases the body's sensitivity to insulin.
9. Controlled stress
When you finally manage to combat your stress, your spirits are raised making your brain function well. A swimmer is in his happiest moments when inside the water since there is the release of feel-good' chemicals called endorphins. Swimming also elicits a similar relaxation of the body as that of yoga.
10. Live longer!
Swimming is a form of anti-aging exercise and since it lowers the risk of some serious ailments like heart disease, diabetes, and stroke, it can prevent you from dying prematurely. A study has revealed that individuals who swim regularly lower their death rate by 50 percent. This is means that they can live longer compared to runners and walkers as well as those who do not exercise at all.
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