Joshua Ginter

Exercise is Essential for a Healthy Body and a High-Quality Life

Strong Heart, Bones, and Muscles

Exercise is important for proper circulation and a strong heart. According to Medicine Plus, “exercise strengthens your heart and improves your circulation. The increased blood flow raises the oxygen levels in your body. This helps lower your risk of heart diseases such as high cholesterol, coronary artery disease, and heart attack.” According to Health.com, exercise causes the heart to beat faster which strengthens the circulation of blood to the muscles. Eventually, regular exercise lowers the resting heart rate which makes the heart “more efficient at supplying blood to your organs and muscles”. 

According to Medicine Plus, exercise also decreases the risk of many cancers, helps lower blood sugar levels, and strengthens both bones and muscles in the body.

Crucial for Physical Development

Because of their growing bodies, kids especially should be active for optimal development. According to Healthline, “exercise plays a vital role in building and maintaining strong muscles and bones”, but it can also influence the development of children’s posture, and fascia. According to Kids Health, “young children should not be inactive for long periods of time — no more than 1 hour unless they’re sleeping. And school-age children should not be inactive for periods longer than 2 hours.” Developing a healthy body will enable them to a more high-quality life in the future and decrease their likelihood of obesity.

The Growing Concern of Childhood Obesity

According to the Harvard School of Public Health, obesity has become a growing concern and health challenge not only in wealthy countries but across the planet. This has been a result of the growing sedentary lifestyles and “it’s clear that this decline in physical activity is a key contributor to the global obesity epidemic, and in turn, to rising rates of chronic disease everywhere.” 

Obesity has shortened lives, hindered mental health, and overall quality of life. There has been a significant rise in childhood obesity. According to the CDC, childhood obesity rates have more than tripled since the 1870s and in 2016, “nearly 1 in 5 school-age children and young people aged 6 to 19 years in the United States has obesity”.
Harvard School of Public Health says that children should be getting at least one hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day.

A Half-Hour of Exercise Can Save Hours

The great news is that even just a little bit of exercise can completely change your life. Your brain, mental health, physical health, appearance, and much more is improved with even just a half-hour of exercise added to each day. For all of the elements of life that exercise improves, a half-hour saves a lot of time. For example, if you exercise your sleep will be deeper, and instead of needing to set aside an extra hour to get more sleep you could do a half-hour of exercise and get deeper sleep throughout the whole night. Or from adding exercise to your day, your focus and attention will be improved and your productivity greatly improved. This will help keep you from wasting time at work and in school.

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Exercise Leads to Improved Concentration

Doctor Karen Postal has conducted research on the cognitive benefits of exercise. Her results show that exercise, especially aerobic activity, directly improves concentration and focus. According to Doctor Postal, “following a half-hour of strenuous exercise, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex works harder to resist distracters and performance on tests of attention improves.” Regular exercise is incredibly beneficial for students to improve their productivity in their studies and increase their memory and attention span. 


Dwellstudent also discusses the benefits of exercise for student’s brains and their concentration. The author claims, “intense physical activity causes blood to flow to the brain, which then fires up your neurons and promotes cell growth, particularly in the hippocampus”. Both Dwellstudent and Doctor Postal claim that aerobic activity performed directly before studying or taking an exam is optimal to obtain optimal results.

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Exercise Can Be a Wonderful Activity for the Whole Family

It is great to exercise not only with other people but as a family!

Although it is of course not mandatory, PEO is designed in a way that allows family members to work together to reach their fitness goals. It is beneficial and fun for students to work with others in reaching their goals. 

Exercising as a family can also help the student develop a positive connotation towards exercising rather than seeing it as a chore or an unpleasant activity. According to Web MD, “family activities and fitness at an early age can go a long way toward helping children form healthy habits for life”. PEO is a great way for families to create a healthy and positive lifestyle together. Another great benefit of exercising as a family is a bond that is created in relationships through working through challenges together.

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Exercise Improves Sleep at Night

According to Sleep Foundation, “regular exercise, particularly in the morning or afternoon, can impact your sleep quality by raising your body temperature a few degrees. Later in the day, when your internal thermostat drops back to its normal range, this can trigger feelings of drowsiness and help you drop off to sleep.” Although it would be most beneficial to aim for 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per week, even just a 10-minute walk per day could greatly benefit your student’s sleep schedule and help them to perform better throughout the day. According to sleep.org, “as little as 10 minutes of aerobic exercise, such as walking or cycling, can dramatically improve the quality of your nighttime sleep, especially when done on a regular basis.” 

Exercise can also help fight insomnia because it decreases the symptoms of anxiety and depression. According to sleep.org, “exercisers may reduce their risk for developing troublesome sleep disorders, such as sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome.” Additionally, according to sleep.org, “early morning and afternoon exercise may also help reset the sleep-wake cycle by raising body temperature slightly, then allowing it to drop and trigger sleepiness a few hours later.”

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Exercise is Beneficial for Students with ADHD

According to ADDitude, a leading media source for parents of children with ADHD, “exercise is an inexpensive, self-prescribed, and accessible supplemental treatment option for adults and children with ADHD”. Exercise stimulates “the attention system, [and] the so-called executive functions in the brain — sequencing, working memory, prioritizing, inhibiting, and sustaining attention,”.

Exercise is beneficial for improving attention, focus, moods, and learning self-discipline which are common challenges for students who have ADHD. According to Web MD, “people with ADHD often have less dopamine than usual in their brain”. Exercising releases this neurotransmitter which results in clearer thinking and improved attention.

According to Everyday Health, different forms of exercise can be beneficial for different ADHD challenges. For example, while aerobic activity releases neurotransmitters in the brain resulting in clear thinking and improved attention, a sport or activity that requires extreme attention may be most influential in helping kids learn to focus and build their attention span. Instead of picking one activity, like a sport, it would be most beneficial for the students to regularly switch up their activity and how they approach it. Or it would also be good to use an assortment of activities like aerobic paired with something that increases focus and attention like yoga or ballet. This will enable the student to get all of the benefits of exercise.

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