What is aerobic exercise?
Aerobic exercise also known as “cardio” in gym language, is any exercise that you can sustain for more than just a few minutes while your heart, lungs and muscles work overtime.

The average healthy adult breathes in and out about 7 to 8 liters of air every minute. Once you fill your lungs, the oxygen in the air (air contains approximately 20% oxygen) is filtered through small branches of tubes bronchioles until it reaches the alveoli. The alveoli are tiny sacs where oxygen diffuses into the blood.

READ ALSO: 10 Exercises To Build A Bigger and Better Butt

The heart has four chambers that fill with blood and pump blood (two atria and two ventricles) and some very active coronary arteries. Because of all this feat, the heart needs a fresh supply of oxygen, which the lungs provide. Once the heart uses what it needs, it pumps the blood, the oxygen, and other nutrients out through the large left ventricle and via the circulatory system to all the organs, muscles, and tissues that are in need of it.

Your heart is a muscle too and also gets bigger when you train it. Your heart beats about 60-80 times per minute at rest, 100,000 times daily, more than 30 million times yearly. Every beat of your heart sends a volume of blood along with oxygen and many other life-sustaining nutrients, coursing through your body. The average healthy adult heart pumps about 5 liters of blood per minute.

Fitness benefits of aerobic exercise
Here’s what happens inside your body when you do aerobic exercise frequently:

Your heart gets stronger and pumps more blood with each beat. Top athletes can have stroke volumes more than twice as high as average individuals. Conditioned hearts also have greater diameter and mass, and they pump powerfully enough to allow for greater filling time, which is a good thing because it means that more blood fills the chambers of the heart before they pump so that more blood gets pumped with each beat.
Greater volume means the heart doesn’t have to pump as fast to meet the demands of exercise. Fewer beats and more stroke volume mean greater efficiency. High stroke volume is the main reason why athletes’ hearts don’t pump as fast during exercise and why they have such low resting heart rates; sometimes as low as 40 beats per minute, whereas the average is 60-80 beats per minutes.
Your muscles get more efficient at consuming oxygen when you do regular aerobic exercise. This happens because of an increase in the activity and number of enzymes that transport oxygen out of the bloodstream and into the muscle.
Mitochondria, which are the powerhouses of your cells inside the muscle increase in number and activity. They do all the heavy-duty work to keep you moving. They use the oxygen to burn the fat and carbohydrate that energizes you. The good news is that they increase in number and activity, by as much as 50%, in just a matter of days to weeks in response to regular aerobic exercise.
Difference between aerobic and anaerobic exercise
Aerobic exercise any activity that stimulates your heart rate and breathing to increase but not so much that you can’t sustain the activity for more than a few minutes. Aerobic means “with oxygen,” and anaerobic means “without oxygen.” Anaerobic exercise is the type where you get out of breath in just a few moments. Examples are climbing a long flight of stairs, lifting weights for strength improvement and sprinting.

READ ALSO: 10 Best Flat Abs Moves for Men (Photos)

A caveat
Activities are all examples of types of aerobic or cardio activities include swimming, dancing, biking, water aerobics, walking, hiking, kick-boxing, climbing steps (two at a time for a more vigorous workout), low-impact dance classes, all the cardio machines at the gum (treadmill, elliptical, bike, rower, x-c skiing, stair-climber), and many others. These exercises can be anaerobic too if they are performed at a high intensity.

Health benefits of aerobic exercise
Perhaps no area of exercise science has been more studied than the benefits of aerobic exercise. There is a mountain of evidence to prove that regular aerobic exercise will improve your health, fitness, and much more. Here are some health benefits of aerobic exercise.

Cancer prevention
Colon cancer: Studies have proven that physically active men and women have about a 30%-40% reduction in the risk of developing colon cancer compared with sedentary individuals. It appears that 30-60 minutes per day of moderate-high intensity physical activity is needed to decrease the risk of colon cancer.
Breast cancer: Physically active women have a greater decrease in risk of breast cancer compared with inactive women, according to researchers. About 75 to 150 minutes per day of moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity is needed to decrease the risk of breast cancer.
Prostate cancer: Research is varying regarding whether physical activity plays any role in the prevention of prostate cancer.
Lung cancer: There are relatively few studies on aerobic exercises as related to lung cancer prevention. The available data suggest that physically active individuals have a lower risk of lung cancer.
Osteoporosis
Osteoporosis a disease characterized by low bone intensity which increases risk of fracture. Exercise may increase bone density or slow down the rate of decrease in both men and women. Active children also have greater bone density than sedentary kids and that this may help prevent fractures.

Depression
Regular exercise can help to elevate our mood, thereby eliminating depression. Research has shown that three to five days of per week for 12 weeks of biking or treadmill for roughly 30 minutes per workout reduced scores on a depression questionnaire by 47%.

Cardiovascular disease
A lot of studies have shown that aerobic exercise prevents or reduces the occurrence of cardiovascular disease. In a study of more than 13,000 men and women, it was discovered that the unhealthy individuals had much higher rates of cardiovascular disease than fit individuals, the risk was twice as high in some cases. Aerobic exercise works in many ways to prevent heart disease by reducing blood pressure and allowing blood vessels to become less stiff and it’s less likely for fat to accumulate and clog up the vessels.

READ ALSO: Exercise and Fitness Tips to Improve Your Health

Obesity and weight control
Aerobic exercise is believed by many studies to be the single best predictor of weight maintenance. You can lose weight without exercise by reducing your caloric intake enough so that you burn more calories than you consume, however, it takes a regular dose of exercise to keep your weight off. The American College of Sports Medicine endorses that overweight and obese individuals gradually increase to a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity per week, but for long-term weight loss, overweight and obese adults should ultimately progress to 200 to 300 minutes per week of moderate-intensity physical activity.

Source: http://www.healthdiary365.com/2018/01/02/aerobic-exercise/

nice write up jannydear but I have a simple task for yu; compare and contrast between aerobic and anaerobic exercise

Thank you jannydear for this interesting information. I enjoy doing aerobic exercises. This kind of exercises helped me a lot to lose weight and to build my body strength. Recently, I began practicing a new aerobic exercise for me – spinning. I like it so much. There is an useful article about the benefits of spinning on spinbikeexpert.net . After reading it, I decided to buy a spin bike at home and I am so happy. Now, I can practice as much as I want and I feel always in a good shape.

Interesting.