If you’ve never cared about your fitness and didn’t practice regular exercise or never followed any diets till you reached 40, now is the time to take a step and get the benefits of healthy living. Because once you’ve passed this age, there’s no going back. You’ll be stuck in the current situation as you have been for the past 40+ years. For example, if you were absolutely not motivated till you reached your 50s, you’ll be the same unmotivated person for the rest of your life.
Moreover, the older we get, the harder it is to follow diet and exercise programs. At the same time, the body’s requirements for nutritious food and daily physical activity also increase as you grow older. Once you know the importance and benefits of healthy living for men over 40, you’d do anything to follow any prescribed diets and exercise.
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Now, let’s examine some benefits of healthy living after the age of 40.
1. A Longer Life
The benefits of healthy living start with a longer lifespan. When you change your lifestyle with a healthy diet and regular exercise, you get healthier over time. As a result, we can conclude that your lifespan also increases due to your healthier lifestyle. For example, if you follow a proper diet with regular exercise, you’re less likely to get diabetes and have high blood pressure issues. Since these two are leading causes of death, you’ve just increased your lifespan.
Moreover, a study on 15,853 men between the ages of 30 to 60 over a period of 20 years engaged in physical leisure activities like swimming, jogging, running, playing sports, and more, were up to 21% less likely to die of preventable causes. The study was done in 2004 by the Finland’s University of Kuopio over thousands of people, and the period was around 20 years to get the most accurate figures.
2. Strong Bones
The second benefit of healthy living are stronger bones. Bones get thinner over time, and chances of getting fractures increase. In that case, you have to follow a healthy lifestyle to make the bones stronger. It includes healthy diets that must contain milk and regular physical activity. Research on a few thousand men between the ages of 40 and 60 shows that regular physical activity lowers hip fractures.
Furthermore, another study (1) shows that vibration exercise reduces fractures by making the muscles and bones stronger. However, short-term vibrational exercise leaves beneficial effects on the musculoskeletal system. A study (2) on 50 healthy men between the ages of 28 to 51 years old showed outstanding effects on the entire body muscles.
3. Physical Strength
The third benefit of healthy living includes increased physical strength. Research (3) shows that people of various levels of cognitive impairment can improve their physical strength by exercising 60 minutes per day and 2 to 3 days a week. It’s so obvious that exercise of any kind will definitely improve your physical strength.
Furthermore, it also improves the immune system, which results in fighting infection, and is why doctors recommend diets that improve the immune system to fight viruses. So, we can conclude that exercise and healthy diets do improve physical strength internally and externally and are benefits of healthy living.
4. Weight Loss
A fourth benefit of healthy living is weight loss. When you search for how to lose weight in the shortest possible time, you’ll always see that daily exercise and a healthy diet are on top of the list. That’s why a lifestyle change is a real cause of weight loss. For example, research by Ball State University on 58 volunteers shows that when they started a program of walking 10,000 steps each day and after 36 weeks, they had trimmed an inch from their hips and waists.
Moreover, another study by the National Weight Control Registry on around 3,000 men showed that they lost almost 10% of their body weight. Eight out of ten reportedly were involved in regular activities like running, stair climbing, jogging, cycling, weightlifting, walking, and more to burn an additional 3,298 calories a week.
5. Improved Mental Health
Fifth on the list of health benefits is improved mental health. Depression, anxiety, and stress are the most causes of health problems affecting the entire world. Adults are the main victim of these issues, but now it has spread to older adults as well. Many therapies have been used so far to cure these problems. However, physical activities (4) and healthy food are a basis for effective improvement.
Improved mental health is a benefit of healthy living.
Let’s talk about the science of exercise curing depression and stress. Actually, dopamine is generated when you follow a regular exercise routine. A healthy amount of dopamine reduces stress and anxiety while making the person happy.
So, daily exercise keeps you busy and prevents older adults from being alone, which leads to depression. As a result, it improves your mental health while making you happy. Another study (5) shows that physical activity and mental health have a strong relationship, especially in older adults. It means it’s more beneficial for those over 40. Read my blog, 9 Benefits of Exercise for Better Mental and Emotional Health.
6. Lower Diabetic Disease
Another benefit of healthy living is the lowering of diabetes. A recent study (6) shows that a lifestyle change can prevent diabetic problems. All you need to do is follow a healthy diet and a regular exercise program. It will lead to a decrease in diabetic diseases. More precisely, lifestyle change can lower type 2 diabetes by 28–59%.
Diabetes (7) is the seventh leading cause of mortality all over the world. When it comes to the U.S., it is one of the leading causes of morbidity. The stats are worse when we narrow down the list to men over 40. So, a healthy lifestyle, including daily exercise and diet reduces the risks of diabetes in men.
7. Memory Improvement
Another benefit of healthy living is improved memory. It’s common that with getting older, memory declines rapidly. Regular exercise is the only natural method that can prevent sudden decline. Besides, it provides oxygen to the brain to improve memory and learning even after age 40. Exercise is directly related to cognitive function in humans (8). A recent study of 14-days running showed that it helped increase memory and learning but also maturing neurons.
8. Lower Risks of High Blood Pressure
Lower blood pressure is another benefit of healthy living. Since 1990, scientists (9) have been proving that exercise lowers the risks of high blood pressure. Now, exercise is the most used and most effective tool in lowering hypertension. Another study (10) shows that regular exercise helps patients with hypertension in lowering the risk of high blood pressure.
Some researchers (11) have also concluded that physical activity not only lowers the risks of high blood pressure in hypertensive but also in normotensive persons. With the decrease in blood pressure, heart-related diseases also reduce as high blood pressure is directly related to heart conditions. Hypertension patients are mostly older adults, and that’s why daily exercise is more beneficial for such people and a benefit of healthy living.
9. Increases Sex Drive
You will love your increased drive as another great benefit to healthy living. A study shows that acute exercise increases drive and motivation compared to cognitive tasks, making a person comparatively more self-driven. Also, natural herbs show a great impact on increasing sex drive for women and men. You might be wondering how it can be directly related to your sex life. Well, natural food and exercise increase blood flow. As a result, your sex drive will increase along with an increase in blood flow that also reaches your sexual organs.
10. Lower Risks of Falls
As you get older, healthy living becomes vital for better balance. As compared to young adults, older people are at higher risk of falls (13) due to lower body strength. And once they fall, elders end up with serious injuries that are hard to recover from for the rest of their lives. Exercise can make your aging body strong while improving body balance and flexibility. As a result, the chances of falling are reduced.
11. Improved Cognitive Function
Healthy living improves cognitive function in older adults. Regular exercise and healthy diets help improve cognitive function (14) regardless of age. So, this is the benefit that you’re going to enjoy at any part of your life. It helps boost thinking capacity and memory, besides making a person more relaxed. As a result, there will be reduced depression, anxiety, and stress.
12. Improved Social Engagement
Another great benefit that comes with exercise and healthy living is more social engagement in older adults (12). You might be wondering how fitness can improve social engagement. Well, when older adults go for regular exercise, they would join a gym, walk in groups, and be active in fitness clubs. There will be more social engagement that will also help avoid loneliness. The feeling of being alone can itself prevent many problems like depression and anxiety, which is mainly due to loneliness.
Final Thoughts
As we have listed a few benefits of healthy living for men over the age of 40, it doesn’t mean there are not more. Since these were the most important to mention, we came up with the most authentic data based on research studies done over the past.
So, if you’ve turned 40, change your lifestyle right away to not only increase your lifespan but also make yourself more comfortable as you grow older. Also, stick to BestMensHealthandLifestyle.com for more health-related tips and tricks to follow for a better and healthy life.
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