How Does Long-Distance Running Affect Your Body?

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Answers to the running Q&A:

A1: Ooh, Peter has a great question. I think it dances on, on the edges of a couple of things. One of the things that dances on is the edge of meditation and moving meditation. And so the combination of exercise by increasing your circulation in your muscles, it also helps to increase the circulation in your brain.

So that can help with clarity. I think People who do, uh, quote unquote, naked running, if they run without air pods or run without, um, music or run without sound and they’re just kind of in nature on their run without things distracting them, is really a time when you can get mental focus. A lot of our lives, we are distracted by our bodies, by things pinging, by our watch going off, by people trying to get our attention, by trying to stay safe in the environment you’re in.

And so when you’re running, and if you’re running in a safe, that space, and you can just kind of get in the zone, so to speak, you really have so much fewer distraction. to other things. And it’s very common for people to say, I come up with my best ideas when I’m running. People talk about endorphins too, and the runner’s high, and there’s a little bit of scientific, uh, controversy, actually the endorphins that your body produces that are a type of hormone.

They don’t actually cross the blood brain barrier. So it’s hard for them to get from your blood into your brain. But there’s another, substance in the body that increases with exercise, and that’s endocannabinoids. And these are natural substances that increase in your body when you’re exercising, and they do move easily across the cell border that separates the bloodstream from the brain, and these are mood improving, uh, natural substances, and so they can have kind of short term brain enhancing effects, um, that can help reduce anxiety or improve feelings of calm, and that can give people better focus.

A2: Your listeners have great questions. I love Kaylee’s question and I’m very happy to tell her no, running does not deteriorate your knees. There is no higher incidence of arthritis in runners than there is in the general population. So actually runners who do recreational running have a lower incidence of knee arthritis.

Then people who are sedentary. And she also really keyed into the fact that she’s doing strength training as well to help offset that. And that is a wonderful pairing, the strength training to help build the muscles, like you’re building a brace around the joint from the inside out, and then the running itself actually is beneficial for circulation, which can only help joints to feel better.

Now there are people, if you have an underlying knee problem, Running can make it worse depending on the type of problem. So, but running itself, yeah, running itself does not increase the degeneration of knees.

A3: I love this question because it focuses on maintaining function and continuing to be able to do the things that you enjoy in life. You know, well into 60s, 70s and, and 80s. And there are strategies that can help people be more successful in being more fit and, uh, tolerate activity longer. That includes making sure they’re doing some cross training.

So just the high intensity, high impact exercise can be harder to maintain over time. So having cross training, including stretching, having good nutrition, all of these things really, it’s the whole package that you’ve got to do in order to keep. You’re running going well into your later decades. I take care of a lot of runners who are in their sixties and seventies and they, they may change their focus.

It’s not so much on speed, but more on distance. They focus on maintaining a healthy weight or a weight that, um, healthy weight is probably a loaded term, but a weight that their body can carry without really having excess. Pressure on their joints and by building the muscles having some strength training built in with their running program Again, as I mentioned before the strength training helps to build the muscles that support the joints almost like building a brace from the inside Out which can decrease some of the aches and pains that come with running as people age There’s a natural tendency for the muscles to shrink.

It’s called sarcopenia and And that, that’s a normal process of aging. And so the same amount of resistance training that kept your muscles a certain size in your thirties or forties will not do the same in your sixties or seventies. And so that’s okay. It’s, it’s part of what goes on, but you may need to actually do more strength training in order to maintain benefits and to fight that sarcopenic muscle loss.