For most of us, we often heard that being outdoors, playing sports, was good for our health, especially in a world where more and more of us spend our time indoors for work and leisure. But it turns out that it is very good for our overall health to spend more time outdoors, but that doesn’t mean going for a walk in the park or riding a bicycle. One of the best outdoor activities is playing soccer, a sport that currently reigns supreme as the world’s most popular.
Playing soccer isn’t only fun, but it’s good for us for a myriad of different reasons as we will explore here.
1. Physical Activity
One of the biggest contributors to cardiovascular diseases is believed to be the sedentary lifestyles that we lead, and countless studies that doing around an hour of vigorous physical activity at least three or four times a week can significantly decrease our chances of suffering from heart disease.
Soccer is perhaps one of the best ways to meet these criteria, as it involves lots of running and most games tend to be over an hour.
2. Social Interaction
Humans are not designed to be solitary, and one of the most common signs of depression is avoiding other people as much as possible.
Soccer, often being a team-based sport, is a great way for someone to get out and meet new people while doing something they love. Positive social interaction has been proven by science to be great for our mental health.
3. Helps Lower Weight
On top of offering protective benefits for our hearts, soccer is also a good choice for those that want to try and lose some weight. Our diets of fast and processed foods have left many of us with more weight than we should be carrying, and there are few ways better of melting it all away than spending an hour out on the soccer field a few times a week.
Lowering weight is associated with plenty of improvements to overall health, from better heart function and lower chances of cancer, making it imperative that overweight people try and shed their excess weight as much as they can.
4. Promotes Cognitive Function
This is a two-phase benefit for the brain that can lead to better overall brain function. Being physically active improves the body’s flow of blood, which not only keeps our brain working better, but can actually improve it, great for improved productivity at work and with our favourite real money games here.
On top of that, the aerobic improvements mean that our brains are able to take in more oxygen with every breath, meaning that the brain is getting more than enough oxygen, as it’s an organ that consumes around 50% of all the oxygen that we intake every day.
5. Reduces Depression and Anxiety
This is perhaps one of the benefits that manifests the very fastest, as studies have shown that exercise is a key contributor to lowering overall depression and anxiety.
The more exercise, the better, meaning that soccer offers some true and evidence-based advantages to those that suffer from mental health problems.
