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Physical Activity and Climate Change

By Nazia Rafiq, 2nd year medical students as part of the #TCDMedStudentInitiative on Healthy Trinity Instagram

By Nazia Rafiq

Impacts of Fitness

Fitness. Blah, Blah, Blah. We've all heard the impacts fitness has on us, on our mind, body and soul, and are well used to the advertisements by now. But have you ever stopped to consider the effects that YOUR fitness and physical activity levels will have on others? The effect on the climate?

Physical activity has huge potential to increase our wellbeing, our energy levels, our mindset, and more importantly our mood, and I can certainly think of some grumpy people who could use some more positivity!

Why choose to be fit?

The benefits and positive outcomes of fitness are immeasurable. Imagine a world in which we were all stress free, and all were brimming with self-esteem and confidence. A world in which we all had improved sleep patterns, had stronger bones, decreased health problems and that’s all to say the least.

Increasing our fitness levels would gradually shape our bodies in a way that would make us feel more confident and feel good about ourselves. Think of our bodies ‘shaking off’ all the negativity from our minds, all the body negativity, and expelling all the negative toxins from within when we exercise. Each sweat drop that you shake off, comes with its own set of incredible benefits.

Emotional/Social/Economic Benefits

Exercise improves your memory, attention, and academic performances. It can help you fight symptoms of fatigue and depression, along with reducing the severity of anxiety and depression. Being fit is easier than ever nowadays, and all you are required to bring with you is your dedication and motivation. Our aim for weekly exercise should be around 150 minutes of moderate intensity, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise.
Cardiovascular diseases, certain cancers, diabetes, high blood pressure, without even mentioning the healthcare costs – this is a mere sample of the hardships those who don’t exercise will face at some point! So better to avoid all these and shake it off to gain all those benefits mentioned above!

Why incorporate physical activity into your daily lives?

You can undertake physical activities anywhere – be it from the comfort of your home or gym, but one more thing to note is that whilst achieving all these benefits, you can achieve a whole different spectrum of benefits when you choose to get fit in ways that include being outdoors such as going on a run through the forest as opposed to using a treadmill, and by going out of your way to incorporate physical activity into your daily life. For example, cycling instead of driving to work/college.

We have the opportunity, to kill ‘two birds with one stone’ because when we choose to exercise, we not only increase our fitness levels and thus gain all the benefits mentioned above, BUT we also decrease our carbon footprint as we -in this instance- lower the noise and air pollution by not driving, and this really helps us lower greenhouse gas emissions and benefit the environment. Best of both worlds, am I right?!

What's the take away message?

My goal here, is to convince you to increase your physical activity in any form that you can, but more specifically, try incorporating it into your daily life so that you can help benefit the environment as well as yourself.

And of course, when one person starts a trend, others will follow it and increase the activity in popularity. The more people that incorporate physical activity into their daily lives, the more improvements will be made for us all – and a prime example is the vast number of facilities that have been introduced for cyclists on Trinity’s campus!

This video highlights some of the ways you can use exercise to help the planet