Before beginning an exercise program, check with your personal physician and start off slow to avoid overexertion and accidents. And stick with it. Varying the type of physical activity you engage in will help to use all the major muscle groups in your body, and avoid overuse of any one major muscle group. It will also prevent boredom. Aerobic exercise not only strengthens your bones and muscles and helps to prevent osteoporosis, it also strengthens your heart and helps to maintain your lung capacity.
Exercise also improves the functioning of the liver, pancreas and other vital organs.
Sustained aerobic exercise can help to control Late Onset, or Type II, diabetes mellitus since it aids in the metabolism of sucrose. What is more, exercise helps to spur the production of human growth hormone which otherwise ceases to be produced after about age fifty. Human growth hormone helps to maintain the size and strength of muscles which diminish as we age. If you have arthritis and other joint or motion impeding conditions, swimming is an excellent aerobic exercise. It offers many of the benefits of other aerobic exercises without putting undue stress on joints which, because of arthritis or injury, are unable to repair and rebuild themselves in the normal manner.