How Does Pollution Impact Physical Activities? Must Read!

Let’s start with an imagination- you wake up in the morning with a cheerful smile, get ready for the morning walk, put on your shoes, step out of your home and suddenly you start to feel burning sensation in your eyes and your heart starts to feel heavy. You also feel difficulty in breathing and you think it is because of minor health issues like fatigue and don’t worry about it much. You think continuing the exercise will help you avoid this problem as you are thinking it is just fatigue.

But maybe you are wrong. This situation often arises because of polluted air around us. Today 80-90% air in all the major cities is unhealthy. We normally have a mindset that we get a fresh and healthy air in the morning which works like a medicine for our health issues. Because of this mindset we choose the morning time for our physical activities, like morning walk, exercise, yoga, meditation and other activities.

This mindset could be right if you are living in rural areas, as they are rich with trees who keep maintaining the balance between polluted and healthy air. But with the growing rate of use of vehicles and deforestation this balance is no more in the rural area too. If we are in an urban area then having a fresh and healthy air is like a dream come true because there are a huge number of vehicles, factories, air-conditioning systems in homes and office. These all cause the increase in air pollution as they release the polluted air, like Carbon-mono Oxide, Nitrogen, Chloro-floro carbon, etc.

The extent of pollution we all are the victim of

Relationship between Air Pollution and Your Physical Activities

Everyone knows the fact that any kind of pollution impact is injurious to our health. Pollution causes various serious diseases and sometimes these diseases are so serious that they lead to death. According to the survey, air pollution is the sixth most dangerous cause of death in humans.

During our physical activities, we breathe faster than as compared to when doing normal activities. That means we take more air during these activities; in other words, we breathe more polluted air during this period. While doing our physical activities we keep thinking that we are breathing more because it will lead to lose the stress and make us feel fresh and energetic without knowing the fact that this can affect us in opposite way and can be proved as a poison which kills us slowly.

Here I am listing some of the general effects of polluted air on our health:-

1. Stress: this is the most common effect of inhaling polluted air.
2. Heart Diseases: as breathing is directly related to the heart, it is quite obvious that it will affect our heart if we are not taking the fresh air or taking the polluted air in large amount.
3. Damaging the airways and lungs.
4. Asthma: polluted air is not less than a poison for someone who has asthma, which is a disease directly related to breathing. If we are not breathing properly or breathing polluted air regularly, it may increase the effect of asthma or may increase the chances of being suffered from this disease.
5. It also affects the pipes to heart and lungs: we all know that our heart and lungs need to work harder for supplying oxygen to all the parts of our body.
6. The harmful particle in the polluted air damages the respiratory system of our body and also destroys our cells.

All the above causes may lead to heart attack or sometimes, even death.

Physical activities are very profitable for our body. They provide us a strong immune system, a fit body, and power to resist the various problems. So we need to take care of some important things if we really want to get benefit from our physical activities.

What You Need to Keep in Mind Regarding Pollution Impact

1. Always keep yourself updated with the air pollution level of your area. Do your exercises when the pollution level is low and even at that time put a mask around your nose so that the pollution impact will not harm you anymore.
2. Try to avoid outdoor work as much as possible if you are suffering from any heart disease.
3. Don’t do your physical activity or meditation outside if you are pregnant.
4. Avoid exercising outdoors if you have asthma or any lungs or breathing-related disease.
5. Indoor physical Activity is the best option to keep you healthy and fit.
6. You can also use an air purifier for fresh breathing inside your home. But remember to consider 6 things before buying an air purifier.

Categorised in: Health Benefits