Cardio is the word that comes to your mind when you start doing exercise. We all know it is a necessary component of any workout plan whether you wish to get fit, lose weight or just want to stay healthy. Most cardio performers use it as a way to burn excess calories. Cardio is any movement that increases your heart rate and improves the flow of your blood throughout your body. Most people may believe in cardio like a long, slow-moving exercise like running, cycling, hiking. In fact, however, any type of practice is cardio exercise: lengthy, slow distance is cardio; weight training is cardio; boot camps are cardio.
Benefits of Cardio
Only if we realize how much cardio exercise can do, you might want to do some of it right now. There are very few activities that you can do for a short time which have several benefits. Some of the regarded advantages are as follows:

• It can help you lose weight. A cardio workout helps make us burn numerous calories and stabilizes our metabolism.
• It can help control cholesterol levels.Cardio exercises help reduce bad cholesterol and improve healthy cholesterol.
• It can help control blood pressure. Cardio improves blood circulation thus help in maintaining blood pressure.
• It can help you maintain sugar levels. It can help prevent type 2 diabetes.
• It supports our immune system. As our pulse rate increases, the blood vessels widen and permit for a better flow of white blood cells, which are responsible for virus and infection control.

Apart from these…

It helps in reducing stress, improves sleep patterns and increases your lung capacity.

How often should you do it?

It depends heavily on your level of fitness, your schedule, and your targets. If you want to be healthy and don’t expect to lose weight, having 20-30 minutes of light exercise every day can make you feel great. But, for the purpose of weight loss, it’s a whole different story. Besides, it’s not just a matter of frequency. But also, about intensity. If you’re only doing moderate workouts, you can probably workout every day. But if you are doing heavy-intensity interval training, you may need more rest days among workout days. The fact of the matter is that it’s better to have a combination of the two, so you’re working on different energy systems and providing your body something different to do so you don’t burn out.