Running is the simplest, easiest and enjoyable way to get and stay in shape. It contributes to the good functioning of all our organs and helps our body to better deal with fatigue.
Here are your 30 GOOD REASONS TO START OR KEEP RUNNING:
1) IMPROVES YOUR INTELLECT:
The old image “big muscle, empty head” is now being reconsidered. Several studies demonstrate that running facilitates the transfer of oxygen into our lungs and much deeper in our organism which also stimulates our brain faculties. No further comments… 😉
2) INCREASES YOUR BONE CAPACITY:
Our organism is under the constant action of cells which creates and destroys bone substances. The tensions brought to our body while running act as a stimulus to maintain the necessary balance between the process of creation and destruction. The bone density of people running 3 times a week for over 30minutes is 30 to 40% greater than the one from non runners.
3) LONGER LIFE EXPECTANCY:
Doctor Ralph Paffenbarger explains through years of research that the ongoing practice of exercise such as running and walking could increase your life expectancy by 2 long years comparing to others that train only once in a while.
4) DESTROYS DEPRESSION:
During an experiment testing multiple therapeutic methods to better deal with anxiety and depression, the Wisconsin university concluded that the most successful method was “jogging” with a 100% success rate to prevent depression. Running has also been used to fight against insomnia and was proven more effective than medications. A jog in the evening will help your muscles to relax and improve the quality of your sleep.
5) REINFORCES YOUR HEART:
Running changes your cardiovascular behavior leading to a physiological state well know as a big heart that is animated with powerful contraction and that beats slowly. When an effort is occurring, the heart reacts moderately and can maintain itself longer without getting exhausted. After a jog, it can rapidly return to its rest beat. In other words, it beats harder while getting less tired.
6) IMPROVES YOUR LUNGS CAPACITY:
The work from your breathing muscles will gradually benefit from the deceasing number of breathing moves per minute due to a better oxygen absorption into your lungs. The capacity and quality of your breathing will see itself improved after repeated training sessions.
7) IMPROVE YOUR DIGESTION:
Running not only develops your appetite, but also facilitates your aptitude to better absorb the natural benefits and vitamins of ingredients you eat. Constipation is totally unknown to those who run regularly.
8 ) REDUCES WORK ACCIDENTS:
Several studies focusing on labor issues demonstrate that people who practice a sport (in particular running) had less accidents in their work place and had a much lower absenteeism rate and shorter sick leaves comparing to less active labor force.
9) RE-ADJUST YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE:
Running strengthen your blood cells, muscles and skin tissue. This contributes to ease your blood circulation and decrease the resistance in your arteries because the “tube” is larger. If you run on a regular basis, those effects will be permanent.
10) DECREASE CHANCES OF BREAST CANCER:
Statistically, the risk to catch breast cancer is twice as high for inactive women than it is for others who practise a regular sport activity. An interesting study from doctor Rose Frisch also showed the connection between the number of period a woman has and the risk to get breast cancer. According to his research, the more periods you have, the more risk you have. His analysis also established that young women involved in sport activities had their period much later (15 years old) than other teenager (12 years old).
11) REGULATES YOUR VEINS CIRCULATION:
Running forces your leg muscles to contract and relax themselves repeatedly. Together, they form a giant pomp that manages both low and high pressure levels in your veins. The contraction of your muscles compresses your veins pushing your blood toward your heart. When muscles relax, your intramuscular veins will suck in the blood and fulfil themselves with it. The more you train, the more this mechanism will be improved.
12) EQUALISE YOUR BLOOD FAT LEVEL:
Depending on your speed, you can burn about 100 calories per kilometer. However, jogging does not just burn calories whilst you are exercising. Research proves that your body will keep burning up to 15% more calories within the next 48 hours following your cardiovascular work-out. Regular exercise can therefore help you burn more calories both whilst exercising and whilst resting. Provided your diet does not change this increased calorie burn will lead to lower body fat levels.
13) STIMULATE YOUR IMAGINATION:
After a series of test conducted on the sports team of Baylor College of medicine, the conclusion was that:”Just like your body, your mind benefits from a sustained activity”.
48 veterans joggers revealed that not only they were in better shape than their juniors but also that they had a superior intelligence (refer back to point 1), imagination, self control and loyalty than the average population.
Those qualities of Independence and imagination are not given but grow progressively into you proportionally with your practises and training.
Imagination also increases with the distance you cover during your workouts. For example, marathon runners will often have more creative thinking than sprinters.
14) BURNS FAT:
When the loss of weight is only caused by a hypo caloric diet, 50% of the kilos you lose are from the fat you stocked and 50% comes from your muscles (we all lose muscle with age and when not active). This method of losing weight is very difficult to keep up as it will cause fatigue and multiple frustration caused by the diet program itself. On the other hand, it was proven that practising an exercise such as running while conducting a diet with lower calories intake was helping to maintain your muscle mass and burn fat faster (muscle facilitate the burning process of fat). The combination of diet and training activity is the most effective way to burn the love handles and keep a defined body shape.
15) DECREASES CHANCES OF HEART FAILURE:
If your are in good physical condition and run steadily, your risk of having a heart attack will be greatly diminished comparing to someone who is inactive. Additionally, the probability of surviving a first heart attack is 2 or 3 times higher with people who were active prior to the incident. Good to know…
16) GOOD FOR DIABETES:
Analysis showed that practising endurance activities helped the penetration of your glucose and decreased the need for insulin. Most diabetes who train regularly are not insulin dependant as the exercise helps them to burn faster their excess of fat and glucose.
17) IMPROVES THE SHAPE OF YOUR BUTT:
If you are carrying excess fat at the moment and you are running enough to lose fat then you may lose fat of your butt and make it appear smaller. However, if that is the case you will have a leaner, tighter and better toned butt! Running and other aerobic exercise are not very effective at changing the shape of your body (short of losing excess fat) so if you want to build a bigger more shapely but then resistance exercise is best. Squats and lunges are great butt and thigh builders.
18) IMPROVES THE FLUIDITY OF YOUR BLOOD:
Inaction makes your blood thicker and hard to circulate in your body – especially while you are seating and when the seat compresses your thighs and blocks your blood from going efficiently to your heart. Wearing clothes too tight (belt etc…) dangerously contribute to the slow down of this fluid of life. Running regularly will help to improve the fluidity of your blood by destroying all the elements that contribute to the blood clot and platelet formation.
19) HELPS TO BETTER DEAL WITH MENOPAUSE:
Due to all the hormonal changes occurring during this stage of life (dysfunction of organs of your nervous system), women are exposed to a number of malaises and other physical reactions. Experts assert that physical activities facilitate the good function of your nervous system and the mechanism that works around it. A simple jogging program can greatly help the women’s mental which will ease the perturbations occurring during the menopause (both mentally and physically).
20) PROTECTS YOUR SPINE:
Your spine is made of multitude of ligaments, tendons and muscles all of connected to your vertebrates. This architecture allows your spine disks to have a multi directional mobility but remain extremely solid. The dorsal spine fulfills it’s role of “Tree protector of life” (nerves and spinal cord) only if it is being maintained and constantly reinforced by daily activities such as running. Only exercises can maintain the solidity of your of ligament system
21) STIMULATE YOUR MEMORY:
If you have not jogged for a few weeks, getting back into it will be tough. The same goes with an “inactive brain“, your brain cells will fall asleep. Just like the body, your mind also need to function and learn to keep performing.
Our memory is articulated by our neurons which communicate between each other thanks to biochemical substances called neurotransmitter. We have between 30 to 40 billion of them. They do not reproduce themselves. At 60 years old, we will have about 14 billion left. On top of stress, anesthesia and artery problems, the lack of exercises seriously impacts your memory. Since our brain is feeding itself with glucose and oxygen, sedentary people are at risk. Everyone who runs on a regular basis noticed they remembered some totally forgotten events of their life in the middle of their work out. Also, how many of us managed to find a solution to a problem we had been stuck with during our run? Far away from any distraction (phone, meetings, emails), there is only room left for “clear thinking”.
22) IMPROVES THE QUALITY OF YOUR SLEEP:
To fight against insomnia, jogging is one of the least known medecine, however one of the most performing one. A good jogging session in the evening will relax your muscles that tend to be tensed after a long stressful day. Your physical fatigue will be an enjoyable one and your mind will see things much clearer since it removed most of the negative thought that generally prevents you from having a deep quality sleep.
23) HELPS DURING LABOR:
According to an Italian study from the Aquila university, aerobic physical activities practised during pregnancy decreases both the perception of pain and your stress level during the labor work.
24) STOPS SMOKING:
Numerous studies on the risks and benefits of running  showed that not only it has direct positive effects on the cardiovascular system but also hides a lot of other considerable indirect advantages.
For example, some of those effects include the “stop smoking” syndrome. Researchers realized that runners could clearly feel and see the benefits of jogging on their health and because of that, many wished to keep acting towards a healthier life. As a result, 80% of men and 75% of women who used to smoke at the beginning of their practises managed to quit smoking completely shortly after.
Researches found an interesting proportionate connection between the number of miles in run in a week and the probability of stopping smoking completely. Serious runners obviously had higher chances to quit smoking than others who ran only once in a while…
25) SLOWS DOWN THE OSTEO-ARTHRITIS AGING PROCESS
The result of a five year study comparing 498 runners (covering an average of 40km a week for the last 11 years), with 365 non runners demonstrate that jogging and other sport soliciting greatly the articulations does not actually increase the risk of contracting osteo-arthritis problems.
In reality, the activity can even be beneficial and – slow down the aging process of our osteoarthritis system. In reality, researchers observed that runners despite the aging process managed to keep a better functional capacity of their body and less physical impotence comparing to the other group. It was proven that non active individuals had more articulation problems than joggers. Major medical problems were found in large in majority in the non running group, and for those who loved paying a visit to the road, although one third of their injuries were connected to a trauma following a workout, their medical consumption and number of days spent in a medical facility was down by 1/3rd comparing to the other group. Absenteeism at work was also clearly less for those from the athletic group.
26) STIMULATE YOUR DEFENCE MECHANISM:
Studies proved that a training plan adapted to an individual’s possibility will excite the activities of his/her immune system: the number of antibodies increases in response to the antigenic (aggressor) stimulation and your cells will become gradually more responsive.
On the other hand, an excessive training program will deprive you from those responses. Athletes that constantly push themselves to the max will cause their body and immune system system to become weaker and open to infections. As always, it is important to pace yourself and manage well your efforts. Train YES, Overtrain NO.
27) ALSO DEVELOPS YOUR REASONING:
A recent experience revealed that after a four months training program including 3 training sessions a week, mature people were performing better in a series of Mathematics exams and other logical tests comparing to before the research had started.
28) DECREASES COLON AND UTERUS CANCER RISK:
29) STIMULATE YOUR SEXUALITY:
Physically active people, for most of them, are sexually more active than others. The reasons of such phenomenon still remains unclear, however, it is logical to think that an emotional stability and the greater capacity to relax via physical activities may directly benefit sexuality. Just like for other physiologic processes in our body, the healthier we are, the better our blood circulates and the better the rest of our body organs and muscles work efficiently.
Be careful though with overtraining which may lead to an opposite anaphrodisiac effect.
As always, dosage is crucial.
30) DECREASES YOUR INSURANCE COST:
In the US, life insurance cost are cheaper for people who can provide a medical certificate proving their good physical and health condition. A life insurance company even went further by offering systematic discounts to all marathon runners.
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