We’ve officially arrived at week two of Stress Awareness Month, celebrating and advocating the transformative benefits of a calmer, worry-free lifestyle. Partnering with legendary lifestyle brand Hip & Healthy, we’re taking this week to discuss the great importance of regular exercise; and how such a healthy habit can mentally help us shape a less stressful future.

So get ready to get active, because if you skip skipping, run out on running, and avoid getting in touch with your physical side, this is how the body reacts:

1. Losing Zzzz’s - Our favourite thing about exercise is that it’s the optimal, drug-free cost-free inducer of deep, undisturbed sleep. Sure, we all have bad nights with our pillow, but if this slowly becomes a regular experience, you’re upping your own chances of developing the likes of poor immunity, heart disease and diabetes. In short, exercise more to sleep better. Sleep better to stay healthy - a formula almost too good to be true!
2. Memory Who? - The future of our health is just as much mental as it is physical. Our recent studies have shown how exercise promotes neuroplasticity, specifically within the section of the mind that controls memory and executive function; otherwise known as the hippocampus region. In English, this means that exercise encourages the natural production of neural connections, which in turn, will serve a mega-boost to your focus and coordination skills.
3. All Sweet No Sweat - Exercising gives the body the opportunity to process and manage our glucose and carbohydrate levels. If said levels were to remain sky high during periods of frequent inactivity, you’re drastically increasing your risk of developing conditions such as type 2 diabetes, increased blood pressure and excessive bouts of fatigue.
4. Aches & Pains - Stiffness and decreased mobility is the number one result of lack of exercise. If not regularly and properly put through their paces, the cogs that keep our body turning, our muscles, nerves and joints, will begin to cease up, whilst contributing to the development of a whole host of other limiting issues, such as posture problems and arthritis.
5. Stress Overload - Our research found close ties between how often we exercise, and how we experience stress. See, when we get moving, really moving, a magical process takes place in our brain, whereby our system becomes naturally saturated with the likes of dopamine and endorphins; two of the prime chemicals that improve both our mood and our long-term ability to deal with both stress and anxiety.

The rewards of exercise are certainly not to be sniffed at, and trust us when we say that the benefits of moving, even for just 30 minutes a day, are quite literally life-changing!

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