Reasons to jog: What it really does to your body

by Sonja Niemann Sure, jogging is healthy and all that. There are people who love it. BRIGITTE editor Sonja Niemann, on the other hand, still has problems with the word. There is no expression for what running has given her.

When I first thought about going jogging in my life, I was 32 years old and hadn't done any exercise for years, other than going somewhere on my bike occasionally, like going to the pub. From my point of view, there were many things that spoke against running. For example, I imagined it to be incredibly boring. This was supported by the fact that it was relatively easy, you only needed reasonably good shoes. In addition, my friend Anja had been jogging for years and offered to accompany me occasionally. Which might be better, I thought, than always meeting up straight away in the pub (even if I cycled there).

Most importantly, deep down, I had the feeling that somehow I needed to move more. Not just because I was slowly starting to lose my mind. But because I felt restless, a form of stress that couldn't be relieved by relaxing in front of the television. But maybe, I thought, one could outrun him.

In a better mood, more balanced, more at one with the world

Don't worry, this won't be a conversion story of how I went from being a couch potato to an avid athlete. Because I'm not. There are only a few phases in which I am highly motivated and run four times a week or a longer distance, but often I only manage a few kilometers twice a week. I still find words like "sport" or even "training" latently unpleasant. My colleague Daniela, who is responsible for fitness issues at BRIGITTE, is missing something if she doesn't exercise every day. Especially in summer I can stay in a deck chair with a book and drink white wine spritzer. To motivate myself, I do a half marathon at least once a year, but because I train too little and not in a targeted manner (as I said, the word alone), my times are not worth mentioning.

But: I've been at it for years now and can't imagine ever stopping running again. And even if I sometimes have to pull myself together, after just a few minutes on the road I always feel better than before: in a better mood, more balanced, more at one with the world. That's why I'm doing it. Not to stay healthy, to get slimmer or fitter (although I appreciate the fact that I was able to poke along at the Royal Blood concert the other day. Of course only on the very edge of the circle, sort of the Ü40 version of pogo).

Movement in any form is so incredibly healthy that it is almost boring to write about it. One can only enumerate the benefits page after page: exercise significantly reduces the risk of having a heart attack or stroke, even back pain, developing diabetes or cancer, and just going for a half-hour walk every day is enough. Sport strengthens the immune system because the production of white blood cells is stimulated, protects against osteoporosis, lowers blood pressure as well as pills, and reduces the likelihood of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's or dementia occurring.

Movement – ​​the positive superheroine

Sport also has a positive effect on the brain and psyche: it makes you more resistant to stress and works against depression, and according to studies it is similar to many psychotropic drugs, which does not necessarily mean that you should leave them out, but that sport should be an integral part of therapy. Sport helps with anxiety disorders because those affected learn that tachycardia, sweating, faster breathing are not exclusive signals of panic. Exercise increases self-esteem, and it even makes you smarter: subjects who did math problems or took memory tests did their best after exercising.

In short, in a movie, Motion would be the only positive superhero who can do anything, looks amazing, and has no downsides, flaws, or tragedy, which is why Marvel Studios would never make a movie about her. At best, one can still discuss details, such as whether instead of the 10,000 steps that one should take at least every day, 7,500 shouldn't be enough. But the bottom line is, if there's a magic bullet that keeps you young and healthy, both mentally and physically, it's exercise, and nothing, really nothing, comes close to it.

Conversely, however, the same applies: If you have a sedentary job and only lie on the couch in your free time, you tend to have a worse hand. If studies show that people who exercise moderately for 150 to 299 minutes a week have a 31 percent lower risk of dying prematurely from a disease, this also means that those who do not exercise at all have a correspondingly higher risk not to reach old age in good health. Winston Churchill, who turned 90, can be quoted so often (who, however, probably never said the "No Sports" attributed to him and was also a good fencer, rider and polo player in his younger years).

A lot of movement helps more than little movement

Now the fact that physical exercise (that horrible word too) is so incredibly important is wonderful news for all those people who used to win the certificate of honor at the federal youth games and still love to train their volleyball team or do crossfit walk. For those who were always the last to be picked for the volleyball team in school and later reluctantly signed up for the gym as adults because you "have to do something" and then only participated in step aerobics without bucking and later no longer at all – the news is not so good for them at first. So for people like me.

For people like me, sport has a certain image problem. And nobody does anything in the long run because it would be sensible and prevent something worse from happening at some point in the future. And certainly not when it is suggested that in addition to endurance training, you should build up strength at least twice a week, including in your arms.

Yes: A lot of exercise helps more than little exercise. Working up a sweat from time to time does a lot more than just going for a walk. Swimming and yoga is better than just swimming, and just swimming is better than just yoga.

The brain rejuvenates

But anything, anything is better than nothing. And it's never too late. There is a study of men in their early 50s who, after years of inactivity, found that 24 weeks of moderate jogging, walking and cycling were enough to get them back to the endurance levels they had 30 years ago. And the brain is also rejuvenating. This can even be seen in laboratory mice that had spent their entire life in a cage, which was a long time for mice: those that were given a running wheel in their old age scored well after 35 days in learning tests - for the animals it was about to quickly find a platform under a water surface - significantly better than the control group of mice, which remained without a run.

Speaking of exit. What I liked most about jogging when I first started jogging was that it allowed me to explore new areas. Whenever I was in an unfamiliar city, I would ask the locals for a good running route, and in this way I got to know the city in a completely different way than by scouring the sights. I find a treadmill or doing laps on a track boring. I've never been fast, and now I'm going to slow down even more. But I'm finding it easier than I used to be to run very long distances at a moderate pace, and I'm grateful to my body for allowing me to do that.

Others, on the other hand, love the sociability of a football club, the sensuality of dancing, exhausting kickboxing or cycling to the office. The main thing is that it's fun. So much that it shouldn't be called a sport.

Would you like to read more about the topic and exchange ideas with other women? Then have a look at the "Fit & sporty forum" of the BRIGITTE community!

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BRIGITTE 20/2019

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