OutRun Stress

Here's Today's Tip... Stress.

Time and again, we’ve talked about how exercise alone (without better eating habits) is pretty poor tool for weight loss. In other words, you can’t outrun a bad diet. If weight loss is your goal, then you’ve got to have your exercise and nutrition ducks in a row, not to mention social support, accountability, sleep, and stress management.

Speaking of stress…recent research shows that you can outrun stress. That is, exercise is a super-effective form of stress management. And while you may be saying, “Duh, I already knew that”, a new BYU study showed that running while under stress also helps protect your memory.

You see, stress can make you dumber and more forgetful. Without getting too thick in the weeds, stress is not only distracting, it actually affects the hippocampus, the part of the brain that’s responsible for learning and memory. And these effects accumulate over time—and become hard to reverse.

In this study, researchers found that running all but eliminated the negative effects of stress on the hippocampus. “Exercise is a simple and cost-effective way to eliminate the negative impacts on memory of chronic stress,” said Jeff Edwards, the lead BYU researcher involved in the study.

The study shows that exercise is an effective tool to protect our brains—and our abilities to learn and remember—from the deleterious effects of chronic stress. Edwards said, “We can’t always control stress in our lives, but we can control how much we exercise. It’s empowering to know that we can combat the negative impacts of stress on our brains just by getting out and running.”

So, the next time you’re feeling stressed, MOVE. We already know that exercise is a potent form of stress management, but if that wasn’t enough, now we know that exercise may be a legitimate and cost-effective way to limit the effects that stress has on our learning in memory. Let’s put it another way…exercise can literally improve your ability to learn and remember things, especially under stressful conditions.

To better health,

Change That UP