Individuals who have an exercise habit of running, even for a short time and at a slow pace, are less likely to die from heart related diseases as compared to non-runners, a study revealed. The health benefits from jogging and other light exercise include lowered risk of disease, increased cardiovascular health, lowered stress, and much more.
The study conducted was large and observational. This means that instead of assigning the participants to non-runners and runners randomly, the researchers inquired about their running habits. Therefore, they couldn’t come to a conclusion that running and not other exercise factors between participants, was mainly responsible for lowering the risks.
According to Duck-chul Lee, from Iowa State University’s College of Human Sciences and the lead author of the research, it is complex to utilize precise randomized assessments to observe the results like deaths as it takes a long time to track.
Lee claimed that the existing study is by far the largest regarding this topic yet it will still be beneficial to perform randomized assessments and experiments, for example, to find out the impact of running on cholesterol and blood pressure.
The research included more than 55,000 healthy adults aged between 18 to 100. Participants were asked a few questions related to their physical habits over the last three months which included running frequency, duration and speed. Some didn’t run while the rest of the participants were further divided into five different groups as per the distance they ran every week. Afterwards, the participants were tracked with the help of their medical records for an average of 15 years.
Of those individuals, almost 3,400 passed away. Of these, around 1,200 died from cardiovascular diseases like stroke and heart diseases.
Initially, the runners included more males, leaner and younger. In comparison to non-runners, individuals running for a little while were 30% less prone to pass away during the period of study and 45% were less prone to die due to any cardiovascular diseases.
According to the outcomes published in Journal of the American College of Cardiology, individuals who ran had a lower risk of dying due to these diseases even when running for 51 minutes and less, running weekly for less than six miles or running at a low pace and more than six miles every hour.
According to Dr. Kasper Andersen of Uppsala University Hospital, these results are encouraging as they suggest that there isn’t a need to go through rigorous running to attain the benefits of daily physical activity. Anderson didn’t participate in the latest study.
He asserted that running is like an investment – savings you deposit in your health bank every day. It is an excellent investment that will result in an individual living a longer and healthier life.
According to the researchers, running is associated with good health irrespective of an individual’s weight, smoking status, age and sex. On average, runners have a three year longer life expectancy as compared to non-runners.
Lee states that the guidelines provided by WHO recommends individuals to do vigorous aerobic activities like running for almost 75 minutes every week. However, the results of the study claims that even 30 to 60 minutes of running every week can increase the mortality benefits from jogging in individuals.
According to Lee, there aren’t many studies that have been performed on the advantages of doing vigorous activities as there are on the benefits from jogging and other moderate activities.
Andrea Chomistek, School of Public Health at Indiana University Bloomington, state that when it comes to recommending individuals to go for daily short jogs, this can be recommended with a few essential requirements. For the people who are not physically active, it is best to begin exercise with walking then easing into running gradually. For those inactive people who have medical problems or are older, it is best to consult a physician before running. However, for them, walking can be beneficial as well.
Chomistek recommends getting a running partner as that can be a great source of motivation. When you know there is a person who counts on you to show up every day, you will be more willing to go. If you have good company then even long runs can prove to be fun.
Sometimes we just feel too lazy to get up and go running, I think we have all been guilty of that at some point in time of our lives. It could be that you don’t have enough energy or drive to do much of anything. This fatigue could be a condition known as Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome. A symptom of the neuroendometabolic (NEM) stress response system that has been working in overdrive and has caused metabolic deregulation throughout the body and causing homeostatic imbalance. The NEM’s stress response function is to naturally and automatically deal with stress via its different systems and organs. When chronic stress keeps piling up to a point that this structure can no longer deal with it, it starts to tell the body it is not being able to cope. Through symptoms such as lowered libido and low amounts of energy. It is important, that if you are in the late stages of adrenal fatigue, that you let it rest and recover before initiating exercise.
