You’d probably know the benefits offered by regular exercise - it enhances your fitness, helps you manage your weight, and improves your cardiovascular health, sleep, and mood. But are you aware of the way exercise benefits your lung health?

How Often Do You Consider Your Lungs While Exercising?

When you workout, two of your vital organs work in a synchronized manner-the heart and the lungs. The lungs take in oxygen to produce energy and expel carbon dioxide, the byproduct of energy synthesis. Your heart is responsible for pumping this oxygen to the muscles that are involved in the exercise. Your body utilizes more oxygen and synthesizes more carbon dioxide during the time of physical activity. 

To deal with this additional requirement of oxygen, your breathing rate has to increase from 15 breaths per minute to 40-60 breaths per minute, which accounts for ~100 liters of air. Your blood flow gets accelerated to transport oxygen to the working muscles. Your muscles get stronger with regular exercise, so do your heart and lungs.

Healthy lungs indicate a large breathing reserve, and this may make you feel ‘out of breath’ post-exercise, but you’ll not experience shortness of breath. you may end up using a significant portion of your breathing reserve, which can result in discomfort but is typically not considered dangerous.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains, “If you’re not sure about becoming active or boosting your level of physical activity because you’re afraid of getting hurt, the good news is that moderate-intensity aerobic activity, such as brisk walking, is generally safe for most people.” It’s unfortunate that just 24.2% of the adult population meets the physical activity guidelines for aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities.

Feeling lazy to work out daily or unsure of where to start? The health benefits of exercise below will have you tying up your shoelaces and making a move.

The Benefits of Exercise

Being physically active is one of the best things you can do for your body and mind. Regular exercise can do wonders for you regardless of age, ability, shape, or size. A single session of moderate to vigorous exercise offers you immediate benefits, including better sleep, reduced anxiety, and reduced blood pressure levels.

Following are some of the long-term benefits of regular physical activity.

What Types of Exercise and How Much?

According to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, it is recommended that adults engage in a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity per week, along with muscle-strengthening exercises on two or more days per week.

Moderate-intensity aerobic activity: Any sort of physical activity that gets your heartbeat faster and gets you breathing harder.

Muscle-strengthening activity: Perform activities that make your muscles work harder than usual.

Confused between moderate and vigorous activity? Use the talk test to determine whether your activity is moderate or vigorous. While being active, try to talk:

The following table shows some recommendations for physical activity levels.

How Can I Support My Lungs to Cope with Exercise?

Taking care of your lungs is crucial for maintaining good lung health, especially during physical activity. Smoking can damage your airways, significantly impact your lung function, and hinder your ability to perform at your best. By quitting smoking, you can potentially see improvements in your exercise endurance within just two weeks of smoking cessation.

The Smoke Recovery Program included in our Optimal Breathing Kit assists you in quitting smoking effortlessly, repairing damaged lung tissue, and improving your breathing capacity.

Exercise Your Way to a Happy, Healthy, Long Life

Apart from the benefits to your lung health, exercise can significantly reduce your risk of premature death from leading causes such as heart disease and certain cancers, as stated by the CDC. Supporting this claim, the CDC explains that individuals who engage in regular physical activity for approximately 150 minutes per week have a 33% lower risk of all-cause mortality when compared to those who are physically inactive. 

As you age, it becomes even more crucial to safeguard your bones, joints, and muscles for sustained mobility. Incorporating aerobic, muscle-strengthening, and bone-strengthening activities into your routine can help slow the natural decline in bone density that may occur with aging.

Furthermore, accumulating evidence suggests that achieving the recommended 150 minutes of weekly exercise can also lower your risk of heart disease and stroke. Regular physical activity has been shown to effectively lower blood pressure and blood cholesterol levels, according to the CDC.

How Exercising with Oxygen Helps Improve Your Lung Function?

You’d probably think that following a regular workout routine is all about building stronger muscles. However, what you might not realize is that regular exercise can also lead to stronger lungs, which is actually a highly desirable outcome. The key to improved lung function is oxygen, as your bloodstream requires an adequate supply to circulate efficiently throughout your body.

But what if there was a way to further optimize oxygen flow during exercise? Well, the good news is that there is, and it's called Exercise with Oxygen Therapy or Oxygen Enhanced Exercise.

By incorporating the Exercise-Oxygen combo into your fitness routine, you may unlock a range of benefits that can significantly contribute to improved overall well-being, including enhanced lung health.