Life Takes Work

Exercise is an act that I believe to be essential to everyday productivity.

As I lay awake, I begin flipping through the channels and flashing across the screen is a recurring theme between each local news station – a person’s health. It’s so true, everywhere we look there are innovative ways to get people active and into a healthier lifestyle. The hard part, for most people, is they do not want to actually put forth the effort to yield any results. Therefore the move toward a better life is halted by sheer laziness.

Recently, my mother and I began a workout plan towards a better life. Neither of us have any health problems nor are we overweight, yet together we feel we could use some extra energy. The science of it is when our heart rate is increased our body releases endorphins which act as natural painkillers that create a temporary sense of euphoria, also known as ‘runners high’. As a result of our hard work we feel better about ourselves, are no longer fatigued after only a day of work, and use the weekends as family time rather than time to catch up on lost Z’s.

Secondly, by daily budgeting thirty minutes of aerobic activity we can increase our life span by years. My grandma, on my father’s side of the family, recently experienced a severe back injury resulting in three operations. Although she endured much physical pain she persevered and is back to yoga and a bike ride in the morning. On the contrary, my grandma, on my mother’s side of the family, went though a taxing knee surgery a few years back and has not yet quite recovered and there is a constant fear she will never be healed. The point of these short anecdotes is just this: the grandma with back complications sought physical therapy and was determined to get back into shape and with a mere thirty minute recumbent bike ride daily she has reached her goal. However, the grandma with the knee difficulties threw in the towel and accepted being disabled, when in turn if she worked hard she would be in better health today. Both of these grandmas are seventy-six years of age, yet one seems fifty and the other seems almost ninety!

On a clarifying note, I am not saying for people never to eat and become work out fiends, but to simply take the stairs instead of the elevator, in turn taking that extra step to a healthier self. I believe exercise is longevity.