The knowledge of the reason aerobic exercise is so important has only developed recently. And here's the weird thing: when you get your heart rate up to, say, fifty-five or sixty percent of your maximum heart-rate (when you start to sweat and are breathing a bit hard), you actually change your blood chemistry. Your blood becomes slightly anti-inflammatory.
"Inflammation" is shorthand for a lot of very complex stuff but, simply, inflammation is the handmaiden to a lot of dreadful things. Like heart attacks, strokes, lots of cancers, adult-onset diabetes, Alzheimer's and others. When you do aerobic exercise...and make your blood anti-inflammatory...your blood becomes an anti-inflammatory agent, tearing around your body, reducing your risk of a bunch of terrible diseases.
The upshot: aerobic exercise does more to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes than statin drugs, about which you hear every day on the TV. Statins are great for lots of people. But aerobic exercise is better. (Hint: do both, if your doc agrees.) So why isn't it on TV every night, like the statins? Because it's free, silly. No one's gonna get anything out of it if you work out. Except you, of course. And you ...well it may save your life. Not so bad.
