Everyone tells us that exercise is good for us, but it often seems like examples fall short beyond “it helps keep your weight down”. This does a disservice to more active lifestyles as the human body expects such lifestyles. Civilization has advanced far faster than the human body and, as a result, while we’re tapping away on our smartphones our bodies are wondering what we’re hunting or gathering for dinner tonight. Hunter-gatherer lifestyles necessarily eat up a fair amount of energy in the search and are physically demanding. Today’s modern lifestyle is anything but demanding in most cases and, as a result, we’re left with trying to make up for it with proper exercise. It really does help your body in countless little ways. We’re going to take a closer look at some of the more immediately obvious ones though.

Blood Flow
Most of us wouldn’t necessarily think that blood flow is something that is visible, but it is in some cases and the results of it are always visible. Vigorous exercise helps to get your blood pumping. That natural glow many people have after a healthy amount of exercise is the result of good blood flow among other things. That blood flow is particularly important as it helps to make up for the fact that an inactive lifestyle can lead to overall sluggish blood flow throughout the body at other times. This tends to result in depriving some things of getting the most out of it. Your skin tends to suffer the most as, while vital, it isn’t necessarily as vital as your liver or heart. Exercise boost blood flow and makes sure your skin is getting its fair share of nutrients. This helps to keep your skin looking healthier and younger. That attractive glow from exercise certainly doesn’t hurt either.

Aging Gracefully
Interestingly enough, routine exercise, especially vigorous exercise, is linked to aging more gracefully as well. Part of this is related to the blood flow benefits we highlighted above, but researchers have also noticed that exercise might affect genetic health as well. Examining the DNA of people who routinely exercise vigorously has revealed that elements of their genetics look and act years younger than they are thanks to maintaining a certain level of fitness. Why is this important? That level of your body affects countless little things. We talk about aging gracefully through product use a lot, but most of us have had an older relative or friend of the family who looked wonderful at every age simply because they stayed active. Combining these two benefits can help use age even more gracefully and seem to defy time for that much longer before it starts to catch up to us. We do wish to stress that the effects noted are solely tied to vigorous exercise or an overall more active lifestyle. Anything less and the effect is more or less non-existent.

Stress Management
This element of skin health is fairly important. Your body and your brain are inherently linked and one necessarily affects the others. That’s why our appearances tend to suffer during times of high stress or mental illness. Stress actually releases hormones into the body that can end up hurting your overall health with enough time. This is because stress is more or less keeping your body in a state similar to the so-called “fight or flight” state. Your body is constantly on alert to respond one way or another and all of its resources are being eaten up to keep you in that state. This doesn’t work out very well for your skin. It leads to a situation where your skin doesn’t get enough nutrients, blood flow gets decreased, and you overall begin to look less healthy. Exercise is a good form of stress management that can be done on its own or with others. This helps to prevent stress from growing out of control and lets you get back to looking your best.

The benefits of exercise are hard to track. There are plenty of obvious ones, but some of them are so easily missed that scientists are the only ones who can really see them. All the signs point to the fact that exercise is incredibly good for the body whether we can see all the benefits or not. The good news is that all the potential benefits to your skin will help you keep looking healthier and younger. That seems to worth a little sweat.