What most now prioritize is to keep themselves active. To proactively move their bodies forward any way they can, to get the internals rejuvenated, to look refreshed, become more fit with a healthier outward resolution on the mind and the skin. So there really are no excuses or suitable alternates but to exercise.
Some will exercise until it hurts, will force body movement just to sweat more.
Most now surrender to the “use it or lose it” protocol, to sum up the reasons why they walk, run, jump, lift, and skip as often as possible.
They find permanent excuses, reasons to do more physical activity.
What’s more important and adds further validation is what any degree of exercising does, is affects our circadian rhythms positively, which is our built-in body clock.
The Role Circadian Rhythms Play
First, what are circadian rhythm cycles, as we’ve all surely heard that term before, but not entirely familiar with how it effects our body functioning.
Think of circadian rhythms as being the body’s natural internal clock.
Everything we do as humans, which includes from the moment we wake, to eating and then digesting, fighting off illness, and then sleeping again, is set and timed by our own internal biological rhythms.
What’s known is all of our elemental mental behavioural and physical functionality, such as digestion, metabolism, hormones, and heart rate, are all dictated by this 24-hour clock cycle.
Exercising And Its Effects On Circadian Rhythms
While the body instinctively functions according to this built in internal clock, what exercising does is alters our circadian rhythms in a good way.
Based on clinical testing, it was found any degree of physical exertion encourages our body clocks to better re-sync itself, once we move or while we’re sedentary, such as when sleeping.
The study was divided into two groups, the first being those who exercised and had “healthy” internal clocks, and the other who were inactive and had “disrupted” internal clocks.
The results showed those with the disrupted internal clocks, had difficulty sleeping, had weight and cardiovascular issues, poor immunity, and extreme fatigue.
All of these symptoms improved once they started to moderately exercise.
Young Adults And Their Natural Circadian Rhythms
What’s known is it’s our individual environments which has the greatest impact on our circadian rhythm cycles, which also includes the alterations we make as we age.
As we grow older, what occurs are changes to the processes which involves several bodily functions to modify.
This includes our sleep cycles, appetite, energy, and activity levels, which shifts during these times.
What was monitored was the daily movements, the activity of young adults along with similar movement by older adults, for a period of one week as they continued their daily routines.
What was found overall, was the young adult participants had normal healthy circadian patterns, which were naturally triggered by movement.
If they were sedentary for one day, and then performed activity the next day, there was noticeable positive improvement in their cycles the day they exercised.
Circadian Rhythm Cycles As We Age
It’s no surprise the same study revealed the internal clock movement eroded with age, while the internal clocks in the younger adults body’s responded positively.
For the young, what alternating stagnant days followed by an active day, did was it created healthy circadian cycle patterns, which was not always the case when monitoring the older adults on the same alternating pattern.
So what this means is that as we begin to age, what these same movements triggered was the circadian patterns to decrease. What the older adults who were monitored in the study experienced was more disruptions in their patterns.
If they alternated their activity days by performing little movement on their off days, there were signs of restless and anxiety during the day, and at night, had difficulty falling asleep.
Exercising, Aging, And Circadian Rhythm Cycles
As one begins to age, what the natural instinct becomes is lessening the exercising as one grows older, this with the belief that resting the tired aging body is better.
But consider a study that was performed on lab rats, which ranged from 6 months old to 2 years old. 2 year old rats are considered senior citizens when it comes to their life spans.
What was monitored was their physical activity levels by placing them on a running wheel, this both for the young and the old rats, and were fitted with infrared sensors for a period of 30 days.
It was found that the young rats displayed the same natural ups and downs during the sedentary days that were followed by the active days. So the results when it came to their circadian patterns were similar.
However, once the researchers removed them from the running wheel, both the young and old displayed similar patterns in their cycles. What this suggests is that it’s the exercising and not the aging process which impacted the patterns in this case.
Exercising And Its Effect On Activity
What was then determined was that it’s regular consistent exercise which matters more, this regardless of one’s age or fitness level.
What doing so does is it resets and then synchronizes the body’s circadian rhythms most effectively, while maintaining healthy patterns as one ages.
The primary cause for this is because what regular exercising does is it triggers the release of certain biochemicals into the brain, which influences the body’s circadian clock to react positively, prompting it to regulate the body’s system that it’s time to rest or sleep.