Feeling frazzled? Experts say exercise will help

Exercise nourishes your body, mind and spirit.
We all covet a toned, sculpted body with strong bones, muscles and joints. We all desire reduced risk for conditions that speed aging, including heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and colon and ovarian cancers.
Here’s something else: when we exercise we are more mentally fit.
“The connections in the brain fire at a much more rapid rate in individuals who are physically fit than in those who are not,” notes David K. Spierer, Ed.D, assistant professor in the Division of Sports Sciences at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus. He's also the author of "Get Firefighter Fit."
Regular exercise reduces depression, anxiety and stress (which speeds aging by damaging your DNA). It also fills emotional needs because it’s time away for yourself from family and work responsibilities.
It’s so important, in fact, that doctors are actually beginning to write prescriptions for it, Spierer says.
Maybe that’s what we need. Women tend to put their responsibility to others in front of their responsibility to themselves, says mother of three Rosemary Peterson, MD, director of the St. Joseph Heart and Vascular Center.
Does that mean you need to join a gym, sign up for a marathon or upend your entire life?
Nope. Turns out we all just need to listen to that song my kids keep playing over and over -- Sacha Baron Cohen’s “I Like to Move It” from the Madagascar soundtrack (sorry, it’s stuck in my head too). Exercise is effective even if you only do it in 10 minute chunks.
Next time you hesitate to work in a workout, keep this in mind:
“The philosophy of aging that I believe is absolutely true is we don’t quit playing because we get old, we grow old because we quit playing,” said orthopedic surgeon Joshua Johnston, MD, with Franciscan Medical Group at a recent women’s health festival in Tacoma, WA.