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How Does Running Improve Your Mental Health?
Most people are familiar with the physical health benefits of running. A few laps a day can protect your cardiovascular health and tone your muscles. But do you know that running also boasts mental health advantages that even outweigh its physical benefits?
Here’s how running may be a lot better for you than you realize.
Running Helps You Manage Stress
There are plenty of factors in modern life that contribute to daily stress: interpersonal relationships, career, social media, etc. When stress is neglected and compounds, it can ruin your mental health and even cause physical complications.
Running helps you manage stress by bringing down your body’s cortisol levels. Cortisols, also known as stress hormones, are responsible for feelings of fatigue and unease.
When you run, your body releases endorphins, usually called happy hormones. An increase in endorphins helps reduce cortisol levels, acts as natural antidepressants, and boosts your mental fitness.
Endorphins are also the hormones responsible for what is known as the runner’s high—that euphoric feeling you feel after a good run, which leads you to a peaceful and relaxed state afterward.
Running Improves the Quality of Your Sleep
Sleep is the body’s natural repair mechanism. A botched sleep routine can therefore lead to all sorts of diseases, both cognitive and physical.
If you want to regulate your sleep and ensure restful nights, get up and go running. Unlike a lot of modern activities that require mental labor, running uses up your energy in a more physical way while letting your mind stay in a neutral state. At the end of your running routine, you will be physically tired but not mentally exhausted.
Naturally, your body responds to the physical fatigue by making room for quality sleep to ensure that your energy levels are replenished when you wake up.
Good sleep has been scientifically proven to assist the maintenance of physical health. It also boosts your mood.
If you’re just starting out, physical pains are natural. But no pain, no gain, right? There are plenty of wildly effective products today that can help you alleviate pain. Use them to your advantage to get a more peaceful long night’s sleep.
Running Improves Your Energy Levels
Have you ever felt tired even if you did nothing? Lethargy can affect the body and the mind, which explains why self-confessed “lazy” people are trapped in a vicious cycle of low energy and low motivation.
Change your routine and change your life by getting an aerobic exercise at least thrice per week. Aerobic exercises like running help regulate your blood flow and deliver adequate levels of oxygen to your brain—a requirement necessary for you to function at peak performance.
Having increased energy levels has a plethora of benefits. It helps you focus, pay attention to the little things in your life that need to be accomplished, and have all the energy needed to get it done, all while in a spectacular mood. Once you successfully do this every day, you can build a habit that will set you up for personal contentment and feelings of success.
Running Mitigates Depression
Depression is a leading cause of disability in the United States, affecting people between ages 15 and 44. It’s a high-impact illness that can negatively affect your physical health as well when not addressed.
Scientists are yet to confirm the real cause of depression, but there are many triggers that can lead to this black hole of a mental illness. The lack of meaningful real-life relationships, for instance, commonly elicits feelings of isolation, which can easily spiral into depression.
Running helps prevent depression in a myriad of ways. One is by helping you acquire vitamin D, a fat-soluble vitamin found in very few food sources but abundant in sunlight. Vitamin D has been closely linked to the treatment of depression as well as other autoimmune diseases, heart disease, and cancer.
As previously mentioned, running balances out cortisol hormones, which are major factors in the onset of depression; helps regulate sleep, leading to a better and more stable routine, which is often neglected by depressed individuals; and overall, boosts mood.
Running Helps You Focus
Just like when you are driving, you are exposed to hundreds of information per second when you’re on the run. That includes obstacles that need to be overcome, routes that need to be avoided, stop lights that need to be crossed at the right timing, etc.
Even when you let your mind wander, navigating through these small obstacles helps you redirect your attention to your immediate surroundings and, effectively, away from most of the things that worry you constantly.
This gives your mind a sense of peace and also a sense of accomplishment while improving your mental discipline and doing away with stress-inducing anxiety that comes with overthinking.
Running Improves Your Confidence and Self-Esteem
Running is not very easy to do. If it is, a lot more people would do it. Just getting up early and putting on your pair of shoes can take a lot of effort. But once you’re at it, the feeling is amazing.
Overcoming these little obstacles, while hard, can be very motivating. One little effort at a time, and you can continue resetting your goals to achieve more. Never underestimate these small accomplishments. They help build your trust in yourself—a very necessary part of succeeding in the world at large.
Aside from the little accomplishments, the physical improvements brought about by running can also increase your confidence. After all, who doesn’t want to look good?
Final Word
With all these reasons, there’s no doubt that running is one of the best and cheapest forms of exercise you can do to improve your life. No gym fees. No instructors needed. Just you, your running shoes, and your motivation to be better.
Run alone, with a buddy, or with your friends. Go solo or be social. The most important thing is to get running. You will be thankful you did.
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