Exercise Your Way to Healthier Skin

Everyone knows that exercise helps to keep your weight in check and your body healthy but did you know that exercise can benefit your skin? A healthy lifestyle, including exercise, has a surprisingly significant impact on your skin.

Ways Exercise Improves Skin

Exercise can improve skin indirectly because it makes you healthier overall, and this is important. But what’s more, exercise can actually directly impact your skin in several ways.

Improve Oxygenation

When you exercise, your breathing rate increases and your blood pumps through your body at an accelerated rate. When this occurs, the amount of oxygen reaching your cells increases. As blood and oxygen flow, your cells (including skin cells) nutrients are brought in while toxins, like free radicals, are removed. One specific benefit to your complexion is that this increased blood flow and the influx of oxygen boosts elasticity, which is a trait of healthy, youthful skin.

Boost Hyaluronic Acid

There is a lot of hype around hyaluronic acid in skin care products, but our bodies make this important substance naturally. The powerhouses of cells, called mitochondria, synthesize a chemical known as ATP, which fuels cells and promotes repair as well as hyaluronic acid production. As we age, this process slows. But exercise is one of the few things that you can do which appears to promote ATP production within the cells, potentially boosting hyaluronic acid production.

Increase Collagen Production

Similar to promoting the production of hyaluronic acid, increased exercise pumps up the production of collagen, an age-defying protein found throughout our bodies. It provides structure to the skin, preventing wrinkles and sagging. In this way, exercise not only helps improve existing lines in your skin but can also help slow down and prevent the formation of new wrinkles.

Reduce Stress

Chronic stress can have negative impacts on the skin. And guess what? Exercise has been proven to reduce the level of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. In addition, exercise also improves sleep quality, which can help to mitigate stress.

Types of Exercise for Improved Skin

It is for good reason that many experts say the best exercise is the one that you will actually do. The most important thing is that you move your body to the best of your ability. But if you are looking for some direction as to the best exercise for your health and your skin, here are our top picks.

Strength Training

Traditional strength training builds lean muscle and promotes health at the cellular level. In addition to all the benefits we mentioned, lifting weights promoted growth hormone, which aids in cell repair and further promotes collagen.

HIIT

High-intensity interval training is a type of cardiovascular exercise characterized by going hard at max effort for a short burst, followed by a brief period at a lower intensity, then repeating the process. This form of exercise gives you a lot of bang for your buck since it can be completed in a relatively short time but has been shown to significantly improve all of the health aspects we talked about above.

Yoga

Yoga can improve strength, flexibility, and – you guessed it – stress levels. One positive aspect of yoga is that you can participate regardless of your skill and fitness level. Restorative yoga focuses on stress reduction and relaxation, while power flow classes can be quite challenging for even the biggest fitness buffs.

Strengthen Your Skin

Exercise of any kind is going to benefit your health and your skin. Of course, exercise isn’t the only thing you can do to boost collagen production and improve the look of your skin. For more dramatic results, pair exercise with professional skin rejuvenation techniques and anti-aging procedures available at Vein & Laser Institute. To find out more about anti-aging options, schedule a consultation with our expert today.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]