• Question: How does physical exercise and diet affect our body? I mean, if we work out more is there less risk of illnesses than if you don't do sport?

    Asked by anon-170057 to Ben, Lizzie, Francis, Max, Sian on 8 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Ben Mulhearn

      Ben Mulhearn answered on 8 Mar 2018:

      What a good question. It has been shown that exercise is really REALLY important for us. It helps to make our heart pump faster, therefore giving it a work out, it helps to release chemicals in the brain which keep us happy, it helps to lower our cholesterol and blood sugar levels. If there was a tablet for all of those things, it would be in massive demand! So why do people not exercise more? I think that people don’t know that even a low level of exercise is good for us. The NHS says that 150 minutes a week of exercise will keep us healthy – that sounds LOADS but actually it’s only 30 minutes 5 times a week. So, what is exercise? It doesn’t mean running a marathon or doing anything to the extreme. Simply getting a bit out of breath is enough. Everybody likes doing different things to exercise. Personally I like running and yoga. I hope that helps answer your question!

    • Photo: Lizzie Wright

      Lizzie Wright answered on 8 Mar 2018:

      Totally agree with Ben! The more we research it, the more we know that exercise and a good diet is so good for us, including for preventing things like Alzheimer’s disease.

      A new area of medicine emerging that fascinates me is on the microbiome – the bacteria in our guts. We are starting to realise that the makeup of these bacteria cause and influence a lot of diseases, from depression to Parkinson’s disease and that what we eat greatly affects this. We need to have a varied diet to have a varied microbiome. This is an area of research that is going to be massive in the near future.

      I can’t stress the importance of exercise enough on health. Exercising indoors has huge benefits, but being out and about can have additional benefits.

Comments