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Want to feel better, have more energy and even add years to your life? Just exercise.

The health benefits of regular exercise and physical activity are hard to ignore. Everyone benefits from exercise, regardless of age, sex or physical ability.

Need more convincing to get moving? Check out these seven ways exercise can lead to a happier, healthier you.

1. Exercise controls weight

Exercise can help prevent excess weight gain or help maintain weight loss. When you engage in physical activity, you burn calories. The more intense the activity, the more calories you burn.

Regular trips to the gym are great, but don’t worry if you can’t find a large chunk of time to exercise every day. To reap the benefits of exercise, just get more active throughout your day — take the stairs instead of the elevator or rev up your household chores. Consistency is key.

2. Exercise combats health conditions and diseases

Worried about heart disease? Hoping to prevent high blood pressure? No matter what your current weight, being active boosts high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or “good,” cholesterol and decreases unhealthy triglycerides. This one-two punch keeps your blood flowing smoothly, which decreases your risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Regular exercise helps prevent or manage a wide range of health problems and concerns, including stroke, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, depression, a number of types of cancer, arthritis and falls.

3. Exercise improves mood

Need an emotional lift? Or need to blow off some steam after a stressful day? A gym session or brisk 30-minute walk can help. Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that may leave you feeling happier and more relaxed.

You may also feel better about your appearance and yourself when you exercise regularly, which can boost your confidence and improve your self-esteem.

4. Exercise boosts energy

Winded by grocery shopping or household chores? Regular physical activity can improve your muscle strength and boost your endurance.

Exercise delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues and helps your cardiovascular system work more efficiently. And when your heart and lung health improve, you have more energy to tackle daily chores.

Many people don’t realize that problems with high cholesterol levels can begin in childhood. High cholesterol levels are likely to continue to rise as a child grows into a teen and adult. This increases your child’s risk for cholesterol-related health problems.

What are the risks of high cholesterol levels?

Your child’s body needs some cholesterol to protect nerves, make cell tissues, and produce certain hormones. But too much cholesterol damages blood vessels. It builds up along blood vessel walls. This forms sticky, fatty deposits called “plaque.” Studies show that plaque can begin to form in childhood. It is more likely to form when a child’s cholesterol levels are high.

High cholesterol levels increase your child’s risk of heart disease and stroke when he or she gets older. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. The risk is higher in people who:

• have a family history of heart disease
• have diabetes
• are overweight or obese
• have unhealthy eating habits
• are not physically active
• smoke.

Where does cholesterol come from?

The liver makes all the cholesterol your child’s body needs. He or she also gets cholesterol from food, including animal products such as eggs, meats, and dairy products.

What is the difference between “good” cholesterol and “bad” cholesterol?

Low-density lipoproteins (LDL) are often called “bad” cholesterol. They deliver cholesterol to the body. Some people’s bodies make too much LDL cholesterol. LDL levels also are increased by eating foods high in saturated fat, trans fats, and dietary cholesterol.

High-density lipoproteins (HDL) are often called “good” cholesterol. They remove cholesterol from the blood. A healthy level of HDL may help protect against heart disease. Exercise can increase the amount of HDL cholesterol the body produces. Avoiding trans fats and following a healthy diet also can increase HDL levels.

Sometimes cholesterol levels are high because of a high LDL (“bad” cholesterol) level. This increases the risk for heart disease or stroke. Other times, cholesterol levels are high because of a high HDL (“good” cholesterol) level. This does not increase the risk for heart disease or stroke.

Should my child be tested for high cholesterol levels?

Most children do not need to be tested for high cholesterol. Your child should be tested if there is a family history of high cholesterol. Your doctor will also recommend testing if your child or teen has diabetes.

What causes high cholesterol levels in children?

The following are factors that can cause high cholesterol levels in children:

• Family history of high cholesterol levels (for example, a parent who has high cholesterol levels).
• Lack of physical activity.
• Obesity.

Path to improved health

You can help your child maintain a healthy weight by making healthy choices. Teach him or her to make healthy food choices and be physically active.

Here are a few tips:

• Offer your child at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables each day. For example, have healthy snacks such as apples, bananas, carrots, and celery readily available.
• Include plenty of low-fat proteins, vegetables, and whole grains in the meals you make.
• Avoid saturated fat and trans fats. Saturated fats are usually found in animal products (for example, meat and eggs). You can also find them in dairy products (for example, cheese and butter). Many snack foods (for example, cookies and chips) are high in saturated fat. Trans fats are usually found in processed foods (for example, doughnuts and crackers). They are also in fried foods (for example, French fries and onion rings).
• Avoid fast-food dining. If you do eat at a fast-food or sit-down restaurant, choose the healthiest options available.
• Limit your child’s time using a TV, computer, cell phone, or game station to no more than 1 to 2 hours a day. Set a good example by limiting your own screen time, too.
• Encourage your child to find physical activities he or she enjoys and get active. Aim for at least 1 hour of active play every day.
• Make physical activity part of your whole family’s lifestyle. Take a walk, go for a bike ride, or do chores together. Plan active family outings.

Things to consider

Healthy eating and physical activity are the first choice to lower a child or teen’s high cholesterol levels. If these don’t help, your family doctor may consider prescribing a cholesterol-lowering medicine. This type of medicine may be needed if your child has diabetes or is overweight or obese.

Not all medicines are safe for use in children. Do not give your child a cholesterol-lowering medicine that isn’t specifically prescribed to him or her.

Questions for your doctor

• Should I have my child’s cholesterol level tested?
• If my child’s cholesterol level is high now, will it always be high?
• How often should my child’s cholesterol level be tested?
• Does my child need to see a specialist?
• Do you recommend any other diagnostic tests?
• What are our options for cholesterol treatment?
• What are the benefits, risks, or side effects of these treatments?

Imagine having recurrent physical symptoms that cause you discomfort, pain, and distress—then being told by the medical establishment that what you see and feel do not add up to a legitimate disease or syndrome.

That’s the experience of countless people convinced they are suffering from a real illness—such as singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, who believes she has Morgellons disease, a questionable condition that makes people feel “fibers” or other objects poking out of their skin. With the recent release of the new book, Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell, her mysterious illness is once again in the spotlight.

You don’t have to look hard to find other accounts of Morgellons or similar illnesses that often get the side eye from doctors. But you do have to look hard for any medical or scientific evidence that these and other conditions truly exist. As a result, many sufferers are left with few options for treatment of real symptoms that can’t be explained. Here are 7 of these baffling conditions, and the cases for and against them.
Morgellons disease

The symptoms Mitchell described to the LA Times in 2010 sound agonizing: “Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin like mushrooms after a rainstorm: They cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable, or mineral. Morgellons is a slow, unpredictable killer—a terrorist disease: It will blow up one of your organs, leaving you in bed for a year.”

But when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tried to determine what causes such symptoms in the approximately four out of every 100,000 people who experience them, researchers were stumped. “No common underlying medical condition or infectious source was identified, similar to more commonly recognized conditions such as delusional infestation,” study authors concluded in 2012.

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Indeed, Morgellons is often chocked up to delusions: Perhaps sufferers are actually dealing with a mental illness that conjures up feelings of being infected by parasites, called delusional parasitosis, which might account for the creepy-crawly sensations that people say they experience with Morgellons.
Chronic Lyme disease

This term is sometimes used to describe patients who have lingering symptoms of actual Lyme disease, something that occurs in up to 20 percent of Lyme cases. However, some doctors diagnose patients with something dubbed chronic Lyme disease when they were never infected with this tick-borne illness in the first place, yet they have unexplained Lyme–like symptoms including joint pain, fatigue, and muscle aches.

Chronic Lyme disease is not an accepted medical diagnosis, and there’s no evidence that treating it—usually with long courses of IV antibiotics— helps alleviate symptoms. The doctors who offer such treatments “don’t typically follow the most commonly recommended treatments and the evidence-based guidelines,” Christina Nelson, MD, medical epidemiologist for the CDC told Health previously. “Most general practitioners and infectious disease physicians would not provide this type of care.”
Adrenal fatigue

Exhaustion, body aches, trouble sleeping, and undereye bags have lately been attributed to adrenal fatigue, but there’s no evidence that’s a thing. First described in 1998, the illness supposedly is based around the idea that the adrenal glands—which produce hormones that control metabolism and fight stress and are situated near the kidneys—stop working properly when the body is overtaxed by stress or illness.

Still, there’s no actual proof that taxing the body wears out the adrenal glands, and blaming symptoms on adrenal fatigue could delay treatment for what’s really wrong. “Symptoms of fatigue, body aches, trouble sleeping, indigestion, and nervousness are nonspecific and could be due to a variety of other diseases, including sleep disorders, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, and thyroid disease,” Marilyn Tan, MD, an endocrinologist with Stanford Health Care and clinical assistant professor of medicine at Stanford School of Medicine told Health previously. “To attribute all symptoms to a single diagnosis of ‘adrenal fatigue’ risks missing the detection of other treatable underlying diseases.”
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

Sometimes jokingly referred to by skeptics as “Wi-Fi allergies,” EHS is supposedly triggered after a person is exposed to electromagnetic radiation, which comes from computers, cell phones, and other electronics. It’s associated with fatigue, nausea, and heart palpitations. While the symptoms themselves are legit, there’s little evidence they’re actually caused by, say, sleeping in the same room as a Wi-Fi router. “Some research suggests that the physical complaints may be caused by fear and anxiety about having this condition—not the actual radiation,” Health’s medical editor Roshini Raj, MD, wrote previously.
Wind turbine syndrome

People thought to have wind turbine syndrome experience a range of general symptoms, like dizziness, nausea, trouble sleeping or breathing, and headaches. The one common denominator, sufferers insist, is that these health issues started when they began living near wind turbines—the large windmill-like contraptions that convert wind into energy and emit low-frequency sound waves.

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First identified by pediatrician Nina Pierpont, WTS has gained the support of a handful of doctors who contribute opinions and anecdotal accounts of the syndrome to Dr. Pierpont’s website. So far, however, lab studies of those low-frequency noises, called infrasound, have been inconclusive. Dr. Pierpont has conducted just one study on the topic, which was small, done over the phone, and did not undergo peer review, Popular Science reported in October 2013.
Multiple chemical sensitivity

Lots of chemicals have been proven to be harmful to your health, like tobacco smoke and asbestos. And recent research suggests that exposure to certain everyday chemicals can increase your cancer risk later in life. But people who believe they have MCS say low levels of chemicals found in detergent, soap, ink, and other products has triggered chronic fatigue, memory problems, headaches, and rashes, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. Often, these symptoms occur after a more severe but short-term chemical exposure, like a chemical spill.