Doctor Advocates Regular Exercise

Regular exercise and physical activity are important and beneficial to long-term health and well being, Dr Abiodun Awolusi, Acting Head, Emergency Unit, National Hospital, Abuja, has said.

He told newsmen in Abuja recently that those who engaged in exercises usually lived healthily.

“Regular exercise is very good for the body and it helps the heart to pump blood properly and makes you live good health.

“For example, 80 per cent of cases of hypertension, we don’t know the cause; that is the one they refer to as essential hypertension. All we know is that when we take your blood pressure it is high.

“There are factors that could be responsible. For example, the secondary hypertension may be caused by kidney disease and some other vital organs that are diseased in the body.’’

Awolusi listed the benefits of exercises to include reduction in risk of premature death, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, colon and breast cancer, diabetes, obesity and anxiety, among others.

He said: “If you exercise daily, it prevents you from becoming obese and it increases your fitness level and it gives you the ability to go through the day with relative energy.

“This enables you to have more energy at the end of the day and get more accomplished during the day with less fatigue.

“Exercises maintain the bones and strengthen the muscles; you find out that if you have not done it for a long time, when you do it, you have muscle pull because the muscles are is not used to it.’’

Awolusi said exercises help to increase metabolism and to burn calories, adding: “when you burn calories, you won’t accumulate fat’’.

He stressed that exercises also helped to decrease the tendency clotting in the blood vessel, stating that it was important because blood clots were often the causes of heart attacks and strokes.

He recommended 20 minutes to 30 minutes of energetic activities three or more times a week.