Just a few more thoughts on why you might want to exercise and a tip to help you stick with it.

It is clear that exercise is important, yet people struggle to do it.

Aerobic exercise as an example has been shown to help with: muscle tone, stroke patients, memory, rheumatoid arthritis, inhibit gray matter loss in the brain, panic disorders, stress chemical changes, muscle function, muscle disease, brain function, decreases pain/changes pain perception, improve sleep, improve quality of life, HIV patients, cardiopulmonary fitness, osteoarthritis, aids the immune system, decrease chronic inflammation, migraines, helps heart disease, post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, just as good as anti-depressants, low back pain, fibromyalgia, increase brain size, pregnancy, diabetic/insulin, nerve sensitivity, brain injured patients, cystic fibroses, chronic fatigue syndrome, oxygenates the brain, improve mood, etc.  A pretty impressive list, don't you wish you could get all of that in a pill...well you can't, unless that pill is

shaped like physical activity called exercise.

Here's a couple pretty neat studies and some interesting findings:

D. K. McGuire et al., "A Thirty Year Follow-Up of the Dallas Bed Rest and Training Study," Circulation. 104 (2001): 1350-57.

Approximately 30 years ago a very important study on exercise was conducted. The study was called the Dallas Bed Rest and Training Study. Researchers recruited 6 college students to literally spend their summer in bed.

• After just three weeks in bed, the subjects experienced deterioration in cardio-vascular fitness that was equivalent to twenty years of aging.
• Thirty years later, five of the six subjects were retested. 
• Only two had continued to exercise with any regularity, and all had gained weight and body fat. 
• Even so, the declines from thirty years of actually aging were less than those they had suffered during the original three weeks of bed rest. 
• Immediately after being tested, the five men were put on an aerobic exercise pro-gram, which included regular walking, jogging, and cycling. 
• In just six months, the declines they had suffered over the previous thirty years were completely reversed

Heiden, E., M. Testa, et al. (2009). Faster, Better, Stronger, HarperCollins

A group of students were gathered to participate in an exercise study.

• The first group of students was asked to exercise at least once for twenty minutes during the next week. All they had to do was to do a single 20 minute exercise. After the week, it was found that only 29% complied with the instruction. 
• A second group of students was given the same challenge, along with detailed information about the significant role exercise plays in reducing the risk of heart disease, an attempt to further motivate them. Following the week, it was found that 39% of them complied with the instruction. 
• A third and final group were asked to commit to exercising at a specific time, on a specific day, at a designated location. For this group, compliance more than doubled to an extraordinary 91%.

Looks like a little exercise can go a long way to make you healthy and feeling younger.  Setting up a specific time and place seems to help us stick with it.