COLOGNE (Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa)) -- Putting some bounce into your life on a home trampoline can help you to be physically fit and happy, too, according to Ingo Froboese, a professor at the Health Centre of the German Sport University in Cologne. As an exercise device, he says, a trampoline is almost unbeatable in providing an overall workout.

"Just 20 to 30 minutes daily on a trampoline simultaneously improves coordination, lowers blood pressure and strengthens the immune system by boosting the production of red and white blood cells," remarked Froboese, adding that muscles also got an intensive workout, burning more calories.

"The fast twitch muscles fibres, in particular, are optimally exercised," Froboese said. "While hopping and jumping are part of a child's day, we increasingly unlearn and forget it the older we get. Or do you still hop and jump on your way to the office?"

So Froboese advises hopping and jumping, though not necessarily on the way to the office. An overall workout on a trampoline, he said, improves both agility and reaction time and lowers the risk of falling. And it is good for the mind as well as the body.

"The constant up and down increases blood flow to all organs, including the brain," he noted. "Important nutrients are pumped with the blood into the organs."

Simply the feeling of weightlessness is like balm for the soul, clearing the mind and making the person on the trampoline feel lighter and less burdened, he said.

"Hopping and jumping also causes the release of the mood-enhancing neurotransmitter serotonin."

Trampoline workouts are also recommendable as an anti-stress programme, Froboese said, noting that they calmed the thyroid, pituitary and adrenal glands, which are responsible for the production of stress hormones.

Copyright 2012 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH