the all-natural HAPPY PILL

Movement is medicine. In this installment of our Power Up Program, WD Editor in Chief Meaghan Murphy shares the science behind the health boost exercise delivers along with simple strategies to help you get moving.

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You already know that exercise is good for you. No doubt you learned that in school, or your doctor mentioned it, or maybe you've read articles saying so. Perhaps your mother, your sister, a friend, or someone else in your orbit (me!) can't shut up about how great this or that workout is. Let me cut through what may have become noise and explain a few things:

Exercise is the ultimate medicine and multivitamin. Just about every doctor, mental health professional, health expert, life coach, and otherwise successful, happy, Fully Charged person I've ever met asserts that exercise guarantees a wide range of both immediate and long-term physical and mental benefits. Exercise has even been proven as effective as (or more so than) a lot of medications currently used to treat common conditions including depression. It's also a pretty great insurance policy against a lot of ailments and diseases, including 13 types of cancer. Yes, it is that good for you.

Exercise delivers the raw materials for energy. Physical activity improves the efficiency of your heart and circulatory system, and better blood flow delivers more nutrients to cells that need them to produce energy. Exercise also improves the number and function of mitochondria in muscles. Mitochondria are tiny cellular organs that act as the cells" "power plants"-they make adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the actual molecular energy that powers every cell in your body. So the better your mitochondria are working, the better and more energetic you feel.

group therapy

In one study of stressed-out med students, those who chose to take group workout classes for six weeks felt less stressed overall and reported higher increases in quality of life (physical, mental, and emotional) compared with students who chose to jog or lift weights alone or with just one or two others.