Endurance is essential to the prevention or management of heart disease, diabetes, hog blood pressure, elevated blood lipids, depression and some cancers.
The most direct and meaningful benefit of endurance exercise is its impact on cardio-respiratory system, which includes heart, lungs and blood vessels. With endurance exercise training, the ability of the working tissues to extract oxygen from blood improves at maximal exercise.
Regular, intense endurance training increases blood volume via two mechanisms:
*An increase in hormones (antidiuretic hormone and aldosterone) causes the kidney to retain water, thereby increasing blood plasma
*Boost in plasma protein production also lead to more blood plasma
Endurance exercise also requires and contributes to, healthy bones and fit muscles.
The body of scientific literature clearly shows that prolonged endurance exercise substantially reduces muscle glycogen, and daily carbohydrate intake is needed to restore it.
What is endurance exercise?
