Exercising The Right Way To Have Youthful Skin

Everyone knows exercise is good for you.  It relieves stress, helps manage weight, uplifts a person's mood, is important in preventing and treating depression, prevents many diseases, preserves one's memory, improves sleep, and the list can go on.  The people who exercise don't need to know any more benefits for exercise, but they like hearing why they are doing a good thing.  They are already sold.  The non-exercisers hate to be told how great exercise is.  They know it already, but they just aren't ready to do it.  But you never know what benefit might appeal to a non-exerciser to make a change, so updating the information can never hurt.

I am an exerciser, and I just learned about a new reason why exercise is good for you; keeping your skin looking healthy and vibrant.  As a woman approaching the half century mark, I want to have good skin in the most natural, least invasive way possible.  Ayurveda teaches the importance of a good diet, sleep and elimination of toxins as key steps to having healthy skin.  Exercise is also recommended for general good health.

According to a celebrity personal trainer, exercise tones your skin just like it tones your muscles.  As a person ages, the skin loses muscle mass, its youthful layer of fat and its elasticity.  By increasing the lean muscle mass through resistance training and weights, the skin maintains a better appearance.  The skin is able to maintain and even build the skin fullness usually lost by aging.  Additionally, too much cardio can have the opposite effect.  Excessive aerobic exercise will accelerate the aging of the skin.  Overexercising increases the production of the stress hormone cortisol which tends to increase inflammation in the body (inflammation impairs body function and circulation and causes the body to age).  Cortisol at high levels also breaks down skin collagen.  The break down of collagen is the reason for the wrinkling and sagging of the skin.

We are each unique and need to find the balance of exercise that works for us.  We need to be careful to avoid doing too much aerobic exercise and doing too little resistance training.  It is also important to remember that movement is good and should be done often, but movement needs to be distinguished from aerobic exercise.

Stay healthy & well,
Lisa