How does cardiovascular endurance benefit you

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But how often should you do cardio to reap the health benefits? The American Heart Association recommends achieving at least minutes of moderate-intensity heart-pumping exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise spread out over most days of the week.

Van Iterson. The benefits of cardio go beyond just your heart. Van Iterson explains how it affects your entire body:. Cardio exercise can benefit brain and joint health. One study reported that physical activity may reduce dementia risk, no matter what age you are. Your body quickly adapts to the type of training you do, which makes it harder to achieve the same results. To continue reaping the benefits of cardiovascular training, change up the equipment and form of training.

Biking, Swimming, Running, Sled Pushing, Circuit Training, Battle Ropes, and more can all be cycled on a weekly or even daily basis to keep your training challenging and effective. Train at the appropriate intensities. A heart rate monitor is one of the best pieces of equipment you can buy for dialing in your cardiovascular training. Give yourself the appropriate rest intervals. Try to set your working intervals anywhere from seconds, and have a work:rest ratio of or For example, do a sprint interval on a bike for 15 seconds, and rest for 60 seconds.

What is cardiovascular endurance? Cardiovascular endurance is the ability to exercise without becoming overly tired because your heart, lungs and blood vessels are healthy. Exercise examples include walking, jogging, cycling, dancing, running and bike riding. Distance swimming is also a good cardiovascular endurance exercise. National Academy of Sports Medicine. You should still talk to your doctor before beginning a new exercise routine if you have asthma, however.

They may recommend specific activities or precautions to help keep you safe while working out. If you have chronic back pain, cardiovascular exercise — specifically low-impact activities, like swimming or aqua aerobics — may help you get back muscle function and endurance. Exercise can also help you lose weight, which may further reduce chronic back pain. A study on individuals with chronic sleep issues revealed that a regular exercise program combined with sleep hygiene education is an effective treatment for insomnia.

Participants engaged in aerobic activity for 16 weeks and then completed questionnaires about their sleep and general mood. The activity group reported better sleep quality and duration, as well as improvements in their daytime wakefulness and vitality. Exercising too close to bedtime may make it more difficult to sleep, however.

Try to finish your workout at least two hours before bedtime. You may have heard that diet and exercise are the building blocks to weight loss. But aerobic exercise alone may hold the power to help you lose weight and keep it off.

In one study , researchers asked overweight participants to keep their diets the same, but to engage in exercise sessions that would burn either to calories, 5 times a week, for 10 months. The results showed significant weight loss, between 4. Most participants walked or jogged on treadmills for the majority of their exercise sessions. Depending on your weight and speed, you may need to walk or jog up to 4 miles to burn to calories.

Cutting calories in addition to aerobic exercise can reduce the amount of exercise needed to lose the same amount of weight. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University examined active and sedentary women and the impact of exercise on their immune systems. All women had their blood taken before, after, and at different intervals in the days and weeks after these exercise sessions. The results showed that regular and moderate aerobic exercise increases certain antibodies in the blood called immunoglobulins.

That ultimately strengthens the immune system. The sedentary group of women saw no improvement in immune system function and their cortisol levels were much higher than those in the active groups. Did you know that the brain starts losing tissue after you reach age 30? Scientists have uncovered that aerobic exercise may slow this loss and improve cognitive performance.

To test this theory, 55 older adults submitted magnetic resonance imaging MRI scans for evaluation. The participants were then examined to assess their health, including aerobic fitness. The adults who were most fit showed fewer reductions in the frontal, parietal, and temporal areas of the brain.