Cardio is essential to your health and fitness for many reasons. While cardio is an integral component of fitness programs, many may underestimate its potential health benefits. Cardio has many advantages ranging from improved heart health to weight loss – offering multiple advantages that will make you healthier and stronger overall. If you need convincing to join the cardio bandwagon, here are five reasons why cardio should be an integral component of your health and fitness journey.
Just 20-30 minutes of regular cardio can go a long way toward helping you meet your fitness goals and enhance your overall health, making a noticeable difference in how quickly and well-rested you feel after just weeks. So why is cardio vital for health and fitness? Let’s examine five reasons.
Reasons Why Cardio Is Essential
1. Improve Heart Health
Your heart is one of the most critical organs in your body, and regular cardio exercise is one way to ensure its wellbeing and stave off disease. Cardio can lower blood pressure – which in turn lowers your risk for heart disease and stroke – as well as help lower cholesterol levels; especially beneficial for those with high levels. You could even see improvements in your heart rate after just one session! Therefore, cardio is an ideal way to start improving your cardiovascular health from day one!
2. Helps In Weight Loss
Many people look forward to weight loss as an ultimate goal and cardio can help them achieve it. In fact, cardio may even be more effective than strength training for weight loss! While both forms of exercise can contribute to fat burning, cardio can help people shed more weight than its counterpart due to longer and more intense workouts that burn more calories overall and promote fat loss. Furthermore, cardio can improve overall health which may contribute to further fat loss as being unhealthy can make people put on pounds over time.
3. Improve Mental Health
Exercise has long been shown to help your mental health and lower the risk of certain mental illnesses, particularly depression. Therapists and psychologists now recommend exercise as part of treatment plans, particularly cardio. Cardio is proven to increase mental wellbeing while simultaneously decreasing anxiety levels and building self-esteem – many find exercise the most effective way of relieving anxiety while simultaneously improving mental wellbeing.
4. Improve Endurance
Regular cardio is one of the best ways to build endurance. Running or other forms of long-distance cardio, like swimming or biking, will allow your endurance levels to steadily increase with practice over time. Although you might not notice it right away, your endurance will gradually grow as time goes on – more endurance means greater distance and length of exercise sessions without discomfort and injury – in turn helping improve short distance running times as well.
5. Lower Risk Of Disease
Regular cardio has been proven to lower your risk of various diseases, particularly cardiovascular and type 2 diabetes. Diabetics should incorporate regular cardio into their treatment regime – 30 minutes three times weekly can help manage symptoms more efficiently if you already have it! Not only will cardio help lower risks associated with certain diseases but it may even extend lives; done at an appropriate intensity it could even count as high intensity interval training (HIIT).
Overall, cardio exercise should be an integral component of your fitness regime and can help you meet your health and fitness goals. Cardio’s benefits span from improved heart health to lower disease risks – creating a healthier, stronger individual in its wake. So here are five reasons why cardio should be an integral component of any fitness routine and improve both health and fitness in one.
Conclusion
Our list of reasons why cardio is necessary for health and fitness comes to an end here. Whether you are new to exercising or have been active for some time, cardio is an integral component of any fitness routine and should be prioritized over other forms of physical activity. Cardio can help strengthen heart health, lower risk for heart disease, promote weight loss, boost energy levels, increase energy reserves and even help sleep quality! Whether running, cycling, swimming or HIIT are your preferred activities there are various ways of including cardio into your routine so get out there and start doing more cardio!
