When you become a runner, it changes your life, in more ways than you may know. Here’s evidence of the amazing benefits running can give you.
By Amby Burfoot, Podium Runner
Benefit 1. Running adds years to your life and life to your years.
Numerous studies have shown that running increases lifespan. This has led to the oft-repeated observation: “If exercise were a pill, it would be the most popular pill in the world.” Worth noting: It would also be the least expensive, with little to no cost.
A 2018 meta-analysis of research on running and longevity found that runners have about a 25 to 30 percent lower rate of all-cause mortality on follow-up than non runners. It concluded: “Any amount of running, even once a week, is better than no running.”
Another runner-specific paper showed that runners gain about three years of extra life. Why? Some of the biological pathways include: greater cardiovascular fitness, better body composition (less fat), lower cholesterol, excellent glucose and insulin control, stronger bones, better hormone regulation, and positive neurological functioning.
Few of us, however, simply want to live longer. Rather, we hope for a long, productive, healthy, active life. That’s where running and high-fitness shine. Since “seniors” consume a high percent of the public-health budget with their late-life illnesses, much research is targeted at what can be done to keep them healthy. Exercise nearly always wins this race.
For example, recent research at Ball State University found that a group of 75-year-old lifetime runners and bicyclists (who had been exercising for 50 years) had biological profiles closer to 25-year-old graduate students than to their non-exercising 75-year-old peers.
In another famous study, Stanford researchers compared local runners in their mid-50s with non-exercising Stanford community members who had the same top-notch medical care. Twenty-one years later, the death rate was more than 50 percent lower among the runners. More unexpectedly, the runners were reaching certain “disability scores” 11 to 16 years later than the non-runners. In other words, they were staying younger for longer. And the older the subjects became, the greater the advantages seen among runners.
Benefit 2. Running helps you sleep better.
If you haven’t seen numerous articles on the importance of sleep in recent years, you’ve been, well, asleep under a rock somewhere. And sleep may be especially important for athletes. After all, it’s when the body performs all its repair work. In Good to Go, her book on sports recovery, science writer Christie Aschwanden rates sleep as one of the few recovery “techniques” that’s actually supported by good evidence.
According to experts from Johns Hopkins, “We have solid evidence that exercise does, in fact, help you fall asleep more quickly and improves sleep quality.” An article in the American Journal of Lifestyle Exercise notes that the exercise-sleep connection goes both ways. The more you exercise, the more you need quality sleep. Also, the worse your sleep habits, the less likely you are to exercise regularly.
Runners were once warned that an evening workout would disrupt that night’s sleep. However, a 2018 meta analysis of 23 studies on the topic produced an opposite finding. Except for a hard interval workout undertaken within an hour of bedtime (don’t do it!), other evening exercise actually improved ease of falling-asleep and quality of sleep.
Benefit 3. Running can improve your knees and back.
This is one running benefit that many find difficult to believe. They reason that running is an impact sport, which must be bad on the joints. What’s more, everyone knows a few runners who developed knee pain, and had to switch to bicycling. True enough, but it’s also true that sedentary, out-of-shape adults have worse knee and back problems, on average, than most runners.
Looking for proof? Okay, fair enough. Here’s a study that compared 675 marathon runners with non-active controls, and concluded: “In our cohort, the arthritis rate of active marathoners was below that of the general U.S. population.” Even ultramarathoners seem to fare just fine. When researchers looked at the knees of runners who had just completed a multiday, 2700-mile run across Europe, they found that “The extreme running burden seems not to have a relevant negative influence on the femoropatellar joint [knee joint] tissues.”
Read more at: https://www.podiumrunner.com/culture/10-amazing-benefits-running-might-not-known