Apart from the physical health benefits of jogging or running, there are also numerous psychological benefits. Some of these include the following: increased mental flexibility, confidence, stress relief as well as the emotional boost of the runner’s high.
Jogging and running are aerobic cardiovascular exercises. Such activity sends more nourishing blood towards your brain. This can help you ro think more clearly. Running and jogging also release your natural mood-elevating compounds. The challenges that running presents can also help you learn more about yourself, lessons that may carry over into other arenas of your life.
Running Decreases Symptoms Of Depression
A number of different studies have come to the conclusion that regular aerobic exercise — and chiefly jogging or brisk walking — lowers the symptoms of clinical depression.
Strikingly, in one of these studies, running was found to be as effective as an intervention for depression as psychotherapy is. When participants in the study were allotted to one of three groups — a running group, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) group as well as a group that received both interventions — all three of the groups faced a equally significant decline in depressive symptoms, with little difference in outcome between the running and CBT groups.
Improves Your Learning Abilities
Both high-intensity running, in the format of anaerobic sprints, as well as low-impact aerobic running could very well improve your capacity to understand and retain novel information as well as vocabulary. These benefits seemed to be more noticeable in the case of high-intensity running. Nevertheless, both forms of running increased levels of the protein BDNF (or brain-derived neurotrophic factor) in addition to the neurotransmitter catecholamine, which are strongly associated with the brain’s cognitive (as well as learning) functions.
Changes The Brain
Running can assist with training the mind as much as the body. You learn to focus and acquire determination in order to overcome obstacles as well as fatigue. You get a new point of view of large and small problems and your capabilities to endure and overcome them. The will and strength that gets your body through long runs or out the door when you’d rather skip a training run are what, in turn, gives you strength in other areas of your life.
Alleviates Anxiety
Running – in addition to other vigorous forms of exercise and online pokies – can reduce anxiety symptoms and assist you with relaxing. In some studies which have been conducted, in fact, running may work as well as medication in order to relieve anxiety.
Helps You Sleep Better
These evidenced benefits to sleep, summed up in an article in Psychology Today, include regulated circadian rhythms, heightened daytime alertness, quicker onset of sleep, deeper sleep, and the reduction of symptoms in those with insomnia and obstructive sleep apnea.
Running is certainly good for the body however evidence reveals that it has many essential benefits for the mind too . Whether you’re a casual runner or a highly dedicated marathoner, your running habit may confer a number of positive mental effects.
