Ever hear of the runner’s high? Ever sit in amazement over those goshdarn people who seem to have never ending energy, vibrance, and seem half their age? Or maybe you’re envious that a certain woman or man you know never seems to gain a pound yet they are not on a strict diet all the time, although they may generally eat in a somewhat healthy fashion? Chances are those obejcts of our envy may be lifetime runners.
Runners tend to be lifers, meaning once you’ve caught the running bug, you don’t every stop craving that feeling that you get when you go for a run, and you will always be a runner in some shape or form, even if you temporarily fall off the wagon once in a while, for your whole life because it just makes you feel good and calms your nerves.
Well, there are new studies showing that runners not only enjoy all these benefits and also display happier and more energetic presence, but they also tend to live longer as well as enjoy genuinely and scientifically proven better health. Sounds like a good reason to start running, eh? Even if you can’t run for some reason, say you have an injury or a bad back, you can still do things that compare to running indoors or on machines that will help recreate the same experience.
It was found that members of running clubs not only had less occurrences of cancer and neurological disease, but they also had way less risk of heart disease and generally lived much longer than their non-running counterparts in the study. They also had less occurrences of things like alzheimers and tended to also retain their mental acuity much longer than those that did not run. It was not clear whether this was strictly a difference between runners and non runners though, or whether it was a difference between runners and people who simply do not work out at all. I would hope the same held true for those of us who don’t necessarily like to run, but still work out.