Can Air Pollution can cancel your Exercise benefits !

Exercise is good for your health but polluted air is not. Everybody know this fact, but what everybody don't know if it is OK to workout in a city with polluted air. Does polluted air cancel the benefits of exercise ? The answer to this question is really important because most of the health counselors advise to workout for at least 30 minutes daily, but if polluted air is cancelling the benefits the why should we do that.

Living in metropolitan city with traffic in streets is not an easy task, as the polluted air is always making you prone to serious health risks. You must have seen people walking, jogging, cycling and exercising in streets and parks. Even you may be one of them and must have started worrying now, if it is OK to exercise in such conditions. Don't worry ! The answer is that exercising still improves your health and reduces the risks of heart diseases. Exercise can reduce the ill effect of bad air, but there is noting better than clean air for your health.

Air Pollution should never be an excuse to skip your workout, especially if you are not already suffering from a medical condition. An asthmatic person should avoid exercising if air pollution stats are bad as it can trigger asthma attack. But a healthy person will still reap the benefits of exercise.

Some researches were done to know the effect of different types of physical activities on health of people living in metro cities with a reputation of bad air. The results of these studies are enough to clarify this issue.

  • According to a study, active commuting, walking or biking, can reduce the risk of stroke or heart attack by 11 percent.
  • Normally 10% of first heart attack cases result in recurrent heart attack. But playing sports, gardening, biking and walking for four or more hours a week reduced that count to half. Moderate cycling have the best effect, which reduced the count of recurrent heart attack by 69%.

Living in a city with high air pollution increases the risk of first heart attack by 17% and recurrent heart attack by 39%. Overall bad effect of polluted air is always bad, but regular exercise can reduce that bad effect to some extent.

Some experts believe that exercising in polluted air can put your lungs at stress as they work harder with polluted air, while you were exercising.

Note: It is better to use a park with lots of trees to jogging or exercising purpose, instead of some road or street with traffic running on it.

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